The roll-out of e-tolling on Gauteng’s highways has resulted in a “lot of work” for fleet administrators, says Imperial Fleet Management (IFM) CEO Nicholas De Canha.

The need to make payments within seven days, every seven days – if not using a prepaid or account-linked e-tag – is “quite onerous”.

It is also not cheap, notes De Canha.

The cost for a passenger car travelling on Gauteng highways is around 33c/km, just less than maintenance costs, including tyres, at around 40c/km.

“For commercial vehicles maintenance and tyre costs are much higher. In the end, e-tolling means a significant increase in the cost to operate a fleet,” says De Canha.

E-tolls will see the cost to operate a Gauteng fleet of around 30 trucks increase by about R30 000 a month, he notes.

“It is also difficult to link tags to vehicles and, in turn, to different drivers.”

Yet another challenge of e-tolling is the estimated 25% to 35% of licence plates that are reportedly cloned in Johannesburg, says De Canha.

“This can be an endless nightmare for a company, and it seems as if the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) has no clear idea how to deal with this problem.

“In reality, it can mean that 35% of the bills Sanral produces will go to the wrong person.”

Even worse is the scenario where vehicle owners with e-tags linked to their accounts are unaware that money is being deducted for a vehicle with a false number plate identical to their own, notes De Canha.

Passenger cars with false number plates will “obviously not have e-tags” – which means their transactions will not be capped at the R450 a month reserved for e-tag users. This, in turn, means that some Gauteng highways user may receive a “huge bill” every seven days, he adds.

Sanral’s “enormously complex discount structure” also requires continues checking by the number men and women at fleet operators.

However, De Canha is hopeful that a product from IFM will be able to counter these potential problems.

“You need a product that can find faulty transactions and bring them to your attention. We have developed software that enables this, and will argue on your behalf with Sanral.”

IFM charges R15 a month for a passenger car and R35 a month for a truck for use of this e-toll management and payment product.

“We are managing around 400 tags at the moment. We own the tags and we link and delink it to vehicles.”

De Canha believes that up to 60% of the fleet under IFM management can potentially make use of this product.

The IFM is between 6 000- and 7 000-vehicles strong.

“Bank fuel cards are our biggest competitor, but we believe we have a more sophisticated product.”

De Canha believes that 90% of Gauteng toll road users will eventually secure e-tags, despite a call not to use e-tags from bodies such as Cosatu, which hope this will bring about the system’s administrative failure.

Sending bills out to hundreds of thousands of road users may place an unmanageable burden on Sanral.

“I don’t know, however, if the problem of cloned number plates will ever be solved,” notes De Canha.

“Sanral must also be aware that if those who do not make payments are not prosecuted, the system will appear increasingly punitive on a few people, and they will exit the system.”

De Canha expects Sanral to take three to five years to iron out the problems in the Gauteng system, before it will be in a position to move to the second phase of highway upgrades in Gauteng, with the aim to expand e-tolling.