Musings by Generator

A typical South African Toll Plaza  

Recently an announcement was made that new tolls would be put in place on the highways/freeways of Gauteng’s cities to cover the cost of the current expansion and repairs of the roads. There has been a big out cry about this since we pay a road tax when we purchase fuel that is supposed to be used for this purpose, but what has really gotten my goat about this are the rumours about how they plan to implement this.

The rumours I have heard suggest that they will be plaza-less and boomless tolls, so you would drive past a toll and it would record your trip and you would get billed accordingly. They have two options, either a prepaid account similar to prepaid cellphones in South Africa, or a traditional post-paid account.

There is already something like this on the toll road to Polokwane from Pretoria, which is called the e-tag system. You basically get a disc that you carry in the car with you and when you go through the plaza it reads the disc and lets you through the toll, therefore, only slowing you down instead of you having to stop.

So my thoughts were that they would be going this route here. Not according to the rumours. Apparently, what will happen is your prepaid/post-paid account will be linked to your car’s number plate. So you drive past the toll, a photo is taken of your number plates, and you get billed.

I think this shows extreme lack of foresight by the government. Number plates are stolen on a regular basis in this country so people don’t get caught when they drive away from a petrol station without paying, all that is going to happen is that number plate theft will increase rapidly and you will be paying for someone else’s trip on the highways.

I can hear some of you people who live outside South Africa saying: “Surely they will see that the car in the photo is not the same one as the number plates are registered to and write off the invoice”. In any normal country that would probably happen, but here when this happens with traffic fines, they send you the fine any way and hope you don’t notice and just pay. If you do notice, it is not a simple case of going to the metro police, our traffic cops, and getting it squashed. You have to get a court date and have a judge squash the fine.

Not the best thinking done on this one. While I feel that the intention of the tolls and being boom-less is a great one, if it goes the way of the rumours, then it is just another way for the criminals to make a quick buck.

But, I suppose, we should expect nothing else from our “government”.

I drive past the construction work between William Nicol and Rivonia off-ramps on the freeway every day on my way to work and have been witness, along with many other people, to the pure stupidity of the way they have been doing the extension to the freeway, but the latest events have really gotten my goat so to speak.

After finally finishing the pouring of the concrete for the barriers and erecting the light poles and starting to work on the new lane, they have decided that all the concrete barriers must come down and be completely redone.

I would like to know why, since we, the tax payers, are paying for this billion rand expansion, this suddenly been done? I know I am not a expert civil engineer, but there didn’t look like anything was wrong with these concrete barriers, they looked perfectly fine to me. If there was a problem with the concrete then why was this not discovered earlier when they started pouring the concrete?

This just seems to massive incompetence by WBHO, they are supposedly the best engineering and development company in South Africa.