Following government’s gazetting of the new e-tolls dispensation this week, the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) on Friday said no “meaningful” changes had been made to the terms allowing Gauteng travellers to pay a lower price for use of the tolled freeways.

Nearly a month after Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa announced plans to slash the costs of using the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) highways to attract higher compliance levels from disgruntled consumers, Outa chairperson Wayne Duvenage said much of it was “smoke and mirrors”.

“The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) have simply painted a new coat over the same rusty broken vehicle and tried to sell it as a new car. The public are being taken for fools by this attempted morass of smoke and mirrors,” he said of a scheme he described as “administratively cumbersome”.

With “no meaningful change” to the onerous conditions, freeway users would continue rejecting Sanral’s proposition and the toll collections.

“The fact still remains that a considerably high proportion of daily GFIP road users are not and most likely will not easily become registered with Sanral,” added Justice Project South Africa (JPSA) national chairperson Howard Dembovsky.

Both agencies pointed out that, while the rate of 30c/km, which remained unchanged for registered users, was extended to unregistered users, e-tagged users would be allowed a 30-day grace period, but those that remain unregistered were required to pay within seven days of use to qualify for the 30c/km rate, with the alternate rate being 300% more than the e-tag rate.

Unregistered users paying between seven and 30 days or before an invoice was issued would be entitled to a 60% discount – to around 54c/km – on the 90c/km alternate user tariff, while those failing to pay within the 30-day period would be liable for the full rate of 90c/km.

Further, the planned introduction of the 30 free transactions a year for infrequent users to replace the day pass had not been gazetted, while the monthly cap reductions would only be applicable to a portion of the freeways users.

In addition, the promised discount of 60% on previously incurred, but unpaid tolls, would not be applicable until the director-general published a notice giving effect to it.

“Therefore, no one is currently entitled to this settlement discount despite it appearing in this notice and having been announced almost a month ago,” Dembovsky noted.

JPSA also pointed out that two gantries, namely Inkovu (N4-1) and Penguin (N4-1) had inexplicably been deleted from the list of gantries, reducing the total list from 49 to 47 gantries.

Meanwhile, Duvenhage noted that despite the “pretence” of lowering the tariff, the collection costs would remain above a R1-billion a year, with challenges of cloned number plates and inefficiencies in the e-Natis system yet to be dealt with.

“In effect, Gauteng freeway users have already paid for this freeway upgrade – a few times over – through the fuel levy increases applied over recent years. If it were left to the public to decide, all polls and research point to the fact that the fuel levy would come in as first choice – by far. This is clearly why the authorities refuse to test the waters via a referendum. They already know what the result will be,” he said.

Dembovsky agreed, noting that the e-tolls system had not been uncomplicated “by even a small degree” and the collection methods remained “expensive, cumbersome and burdensome” to everyone.