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Question of the Day: How do you normally pay for purchases in stores?
[May 2013..Dec 2013] The Gauteng E-tolling Thread
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You must remember that the fuel levy is currently financing the massive maintenance backlog. It can't simply be apportioned differently on a whim. Given the current state of the maintenance fund, it's in no way to finance this, and I pointed this out in the 5 page info book. Sad, but true...
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How much of the 45 billion that is collected annually is actually spent on the roads? On that e-toll video they said it was only a fraction. The rest is just pumped into the fiscus and ends up being used somewhere else like Nkandla.
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
This can't be right.
Last I heard the fuel levy funds are absorbed into the fiscus and not used on roads at all.
Mila
Honorary Master
SANRAL said it. The money is not ring fenced, so the ANC uses it for party money then implemented e tolls to recover money to have more parties and then use a bit to pay back debt.
Currently the fuel levy is properly "ring fenced" but it hasn't always been. When SANRAL was formed out of the Roads Board the previous ring fence provisions fell away such that the money went to the general fiscus. You need to check each years budget to establish how much of the fuel levy is paid to roads to establish if the fencing happened.
However the whole concept of the ring fencing is problematic - why should a vehicle that spends all of its time on roads maintained by Kouga and Cacadu fund the national highway system that it doesn't use?. Municipalities are supposed to maintain their roads using rates but the reality is that a lot of the general fiscus is put towards roads but often in very very stupid ways and with a lot of trickle down corruption.
Backlog on repairs are aggravated by having roads which should not have been built in the first place on the list and the fact that the push from rail to road on freight has seen a demand for public funds for the infrastructure.
The only way to truly see the fuel levy placed towards road maintenance and development in a sensible and "fair" way would be for it to be ring fenced to a road grants fund which in the first instance loans out the allocation to road utility providers (currently SANRAL the provinces and the municipalities) for expansion projects and then allocates the return income towards maintenance work. But the opportunities for corruption creep in - although I would argue that no more so than the current practices.
However if we properly move to a fuel levy based road system the fuel levy will have to go up by quite a bit to cover the massive system of roads not provided other than from general funds which should see a concomitant reduction in revenue imposts in other fields (lowering personal income tax for example) but the reality is that it wont and instead there is triple taxation.
OzzieCapie
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Can someone give me a snapshot summary of what the heck the issues are...I do assume that it is highway tolls of some sort, but since they are used around the world , what are the issues here that make it a 149 page thread?
trolling or just a bit out of it?
The issue is that SANRAL have embarked on open road tolling on a long standing existing highway that in terms of constant representations and legislation ought to have been funded entirely by the fuel levy.
Highways in South Africa are frequently tolled and there are many tollgates in the country BUT for a road to be tolled there has to be viable alternate routes and the tolling is supposed to cover a new road or major renovations on the road. The GFIP program has not performed any real tangible upgrade to the roads to be tolled and the maths simply shows that the tolls will be funding collection, the installation of the gantries and a lot of gravy money with a small bit going over to maintenance. The roads in question entered a state of disrepair because the maintenance funds have been pillaged and governments BEE and tender policies have lead to inflated construction and maintenance costs on roads. In the end these will be the most expensive pieces of road on an ordinary surface in the world on a per kilometer basis.
OzzieCapie
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Thanks.
Not at all...the latter. I am in Sydney. Know it must relate to road tolling but trying to figure out the controversy. I started reading the thread, and gave up.
That is pretty much what happens here and in many other places around the world. The Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932, had a toll then and supposed to be only to a certain date. We are still paying ever increasing tolls on it, but people are ok with it.
There are tolls on existing highways, and when you pay a toll on them in peak hour and still find it a car park but happy to idle along, you can imagine what the alternate or older routes would be like. A couple of them had tolls removed as an election tactic by previous govt, but it has now been re-instated on one.
Sydney doesn't have a peak hour, it has a non peak hour- quite literally that magical hour in the day if you are lucky to find when it is on a particular day, when traffic is "not that bad".
Every new highway in future will be tolled, whether privately built or government. The revenue from govt tolls do not go into a 'ring fenced' road fund, it goes to general funds. There is no way the tolls, plus the licence fees, registration fees, fuel tax etc combined is sufficient for the road building or maintenance here. Road infrastructure costs are subsidised by the general tax, GST etc . There is a mistaken belief by motorists have that they 'pay for the roads'...they do not, the roads are as much paid for by people who don't use, and don't damage it. Society needs roads, so society just sucks it up.
And btw, building a private toll road is high risk business. Our 'cross city tunnel' has once again been sold at ever decreasing prices and higher write offs...they are not the money collecting machines that people think.
It may be different there, but in general given your response, I still fail to see how 149 pages of argument comes out of it.
Not at all...the latter. I am in Sydney. Know it must relate to road tolling but trying to figure out the controversy. I started reading the thread, and gave up.
That is pretty much what happens here and in many other places around the world. The Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932, had a toll then and supposed to be only to a certain date. We are still paying ever increasing tolls on it, but people are ok with it.
There are tolls on existing highways, and when you pay a toll on them in peak hour and still find it a car park but happy to idle along, you can imagine what the alternate or older routes would be like. A couple of them had tolls removed as an election tactic by previous govt, but it has now been re-instated on one.
Sydney doesn't have a peak hour, it has a non peak hour- quite literally that magical hour in the day if you are lucky to find when it is on a particular day, when traffic is "not that bad".
Every new highway in future will be tolled, whether privately built or government. The revenue from govt tolls do not go into a 'ring fenced' road fund, it goes to general funds. There is no way the tolls, plus the licence fees, registration fees, fuel tax etc combined is sufficient for the road building or maintenance here. Road infrastructure costs are subsidised by the general tax, GST etc . There is a mistaken belief by motorists have that they 'pay for the roads'...they do not, the roads are as much paid for by people who don't use, and don't damage it. Society needs roads, so society just sucks it up.
And btw, building a private toll road is high risk business. Our 'cross city tunnel' has once again been sold at ever decreasing prices and higher write offs...they are not the money collecting machines that people think.
It may be different there, but in general given your response, I still fail to see how 149 pages of argument comes out of it.
OzzieCapie, the document I created in the below thread should give you all of the information about it that you'll need...
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/578739-What-Sanral-Don-t-Want-You-To-Know-About-E-Tolls
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/578739-What-Sanral-Don-t-Want-You-To-Know-About-E-Tolls
OzzieCapie, only three of the Oz states have toll roads, QLD, VIC and NSW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_roads_in_Australia). Somehow the other states all manage without them. In our case minor upgrades were performed on a road which has been paid off many times already and was a free way between Johannesburg and Pretoria. Now they are asking an insane amount of fees on a road that we have already paid for long ago. The upgrades were also far higher than the international average for what it costs to build/upgrade a road due to collusion between the construction companies and backhands to government. Their are also no viable alternatives. So to sum up, they took our freeway, added a lane on each site (often at the expense of the emergency lane) and converted it into one of the most expensive toll systems in the world I'm sure. All of this without building any new roads, so we have no alternative but to use this insane road.
OMB
Mountain Man
Paul, are you sure about that? At the public hearings earlier this year the representative from Treasury categorically stated that the fuel levy just went into the fiscus, no ring-fencing
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
This.
daveza
Honorary Master
http://www.fin24.com/Economy/South-Africa/Renewed-call-to-register-for-e-tolls-20131201
And we wish to encourage you to gfy.
And we wish to encourage you to gfy.
We also wish to encourage them to respect the democratic and constitutional rights of those who know that you are just shafting us.
SANRAL kicked up a massive fight a while back about the fact that the fuel levy went into the general fiscus and wanting the full amount. For that to happen very specific national legislation to exclude the revenue from the national revenue fund before a general allocation in the budget. As I understand it treasury takes the estimated revenue from the fuel levy and allocates that to roads in the national budget. I used scare quotes around ring fenced because the whole issue that the hypothecating provisions are completely out and SANRAL seems to have done some of its planning on the expectation to receive the full levy. Of course the era of old Mac Donald heading the transport farm is when all of this crap was set up.
I'd have to double check the figures but IIRC it has been represented in legal exchanges that the fuel levy can't be ring fenced to SANRAL because it already all goes to roads. Part of the reason OUTA et al have to argue that an increase in the fuel levy is more efficient rather than the paying of the levy to SANRAL. But getting the actual truth is not likely. The point though is that it won't help to simply ring fence the fuel levy and pay it all over to SANRAL because of the extent of the backlog from the failure to ring fence coupled to the stupidity of the GFIP program. Moreover it wont be inherently just or sensible to a road user pay principle for a massive fuel levy to go indefinitely to SANRAL when less than half of the road network is SANRALs responsibility.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
OzzieCapie
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That is because most of the population lives in those three states, and in terms of cities about 50% of all people live in those three capital cities alone. Pointless having tolls in Adelaide, Hobart but maybe soon in the growing Perth.
Ditto that is what happens here. We just had completion of addition to the M2 out of north west Sydney suburbs, only a 20km stretch of which 50% got an extra lane, so it still bottle necks at slowest point anyway. Toll stayed at $5.50 whilst people 'parked' during upgrade and went to $7 since...that is R70 !!
Hard to believe that to be given construction labour costs unless we compare to 3rd world, India etc to get 'international average'...the 1st world average would be way higher than SA costs.
The above M2 upgrade cost $600M.
The WestConnex project to link the 'missing links' of M4 freway out of west, essentially taking it closer than the current 15km from city, and the M5 from south west is budgeted for $10B
just bypassing the Pacific Highway past a small coastal town like ballina on north coast cost $640M
Viable alternatives are being stuck in worse roads and rat runs, and your willingness to put up with it, your rush etc...no different anywhere. From my place to Airport, quickest is via city and tolls are $2 (section M7) + $7(M2) + $3 (Lane Cove Tunnel) + $4 (Harbour Tunnel) = $16
My toll costs for month is higher than my fuel at about $400.
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So I was wondering this weekend , if as an unregistered user if I put say r100 in their account ahead of usage and kept tabs on where I would need to put cash in then surely I would always get the lowest non registered rate ? That they would have to manage and administer ?
Kinda like prepaid etolls, with the added fun that I will expect them to keep tabs on all of this for me as well as having to prove each toll I must pay is valid
Kinda like prepaid etolls, with the added fun that I will expect them to keep tabs on all of this for me as well as having to prove each toll I must pay is valid
Sinbad
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We paid R30bn plus finance charges, making a total of R89bn for 185km of road UPGRADES, not new roads. Basically a resurface plus one extra lane.
That's nearly R500m PER KILOMETER.
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