The Gauteng E-tolling Thread

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http://mybroadband.co.za/news/general/96491-e-tolls-violating-human-rights-outa.html

Outa has released a press statement accusing Sanral of breaching seven of the entrenched human rights contained in Chapter Two of the Constitution with regards to e-tolls.

“Sanral again stands accused of dishonesty, lack of responsiveness, and failing to be open with users of Gauteng’s e-tolled ‘pay-ways’,” Outa said.

“In a comprehensive 10,000 word complaint lodged with the Office of the Public Protector on behalf of citizens, Outa consultant and spokesperson John Clarke accuses Sanral of breaching no less than seven of the entrenched human rights contained in Chapter Two of the Constitution.”

Clarke said that the nature of the complaints which Outa offered to mediate to the Public Protector on behalf of the public suggested that the rights to Privacy, Access to Information, Dignity and Just Administrative Action were relevant.

“As the avalanche gained momentum and our learning curve steepened, the right to Freedom of Movement, Equality before the Law and even Freedom of Conscience began to crystallise,” said Clarke.

He has distilled ten “statements of grievance” to substantiate the alleged violations with corroborating information from media sources and interviews with people visiting e-toll customer service centres.

“The grievances present a formidable challenge for Sanral and the Transport authorities. Unless there is a radical turnaround this albatross will never fly,” said Clarke.

“Perhaps the most worrying aspect concerns the allegations of violations of the right to privacy on the one hand, and the failure of Sanral and its agents to respect the constitutional right of access to truthful information on the other.”

“Our right to privacy is not been upheld, while our right of access to information is being denied. That’s completely the wrong way around in the relationship that should prevail between citizens and the State,” says Clarke.

The report asks the Public Protector to in the first instance mediate these grievances to Sanral CEO Nazir Alli, MEC for Transport Ismail Vadi and Acting Director General of Transport Mr Mawethu Vilana in the hope that a face-to-face meeting with the various anti e-toll lobby group will take place urgently.

“We have to get beyond silly adversarial contest and self-deceiving media spin. Things are serious and the grievances are not a matter for media spokespersons to handle. There are critical line management issues at stake,” said Clarke.

“It is time for Sanral executives and Transport authorities to face the truth of what has surfaced over the past eight weeks.”

Outa said it will place the submission to the Public Protector on its web site at www.outa.co.za

The Ten Statements of Grievance

Dishonesty in reporting on the sales of e-tags, by fabricating an illusionary and self-deceiving impression that the system is functioning according to plan, and for failing to take users into their confidence on the extent of the security breaches after the Sanral IT systems were hacked or notifying the user base as a whole that their personal data may have leaked.
Abuse of their authority and power by sending unjustified, inaccurate and offensive messages to people that have provoked needless fear and anxiety and undermined the legitimacy of the State in its function to uphold the Rule of Law.
Discrimination against “alternative users” of the freeways by failing to provide the promised level of service to enable them to take advantage of discounts, process their payments via internet banking, and provide them with documentation for normal accounting purposes.
Unfairly penalised alternative users with exorbitant and extortionist tariffs if they do not pay their e-toll bills promptly, while failing to provide users with accurate and timely tax invoices and proof of the usage charged.
Maladministration of the data bases and mismanagement of the IT systems by failing to ensure the necessary data integrity of primary sources and clean up the system, while expecting the users to take responsibility for initiating remedies to correct the errors and problems.
Obtaining personal information of people by violating their right to privacy.
Discourtesy to people seeking redress and explanation for errors and problems that have arisen from internal problems.
Failure to give complainants access to information necessary for the exercise and protection of their constitutional rights, and specifically their consumer rights.
Failure to provide reasonable and transparent justification for decisions taken by the authorities with respect to public money.
Failure to provide the advertised discounts for users who have bought e-tags and have signed Sanral terms and conditions.
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http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Outa-71-of-Gauteng-motorists-still-untagged-20140212

Cape Town - Seventy-one percent of Gauteng motorists do not have e-tage, said the Opposition for Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa).

A survey carried out by Outa shows that 71% of its second "statistically sound" sample size of 2 700 vehicles - counted during peak hour traffic at nine different on/off ramps during early February, three month into the system - did not have e-tags fitted.

This, said Outa in a statement, is an indication that "freeway users are largely steadfast and exercising strong levels of civil courage by not getting e-tagged to the levels required by Sanral (the SA National Roads Agency Limited)".

Outa’s previous research finding on December 12 2013 (within two weeks of the gantries going live) was that 15% of users had bought into the system.

"Those were the early start up days and we knew the number would climb in the first few months; however, with Sanral’s threatening behaviour we expected the e-tag uptake to be much higher by now,” said Outa spokesperson John Clarke.

“Despite Sanral’s intimidation tactics, Outa has been pleasently surprised at the civil courage of Gauteng citizens who have largely resisted and displayed a relatively low e-tag uptake,” said Clarke.

He added that compliance levels have to be well over the 85% level to indicate successful implementation of e-tolling. With less than a third of freeway users tagged up at this stage, Outa believes the system is headed for failure, "as it has in many parts of the world under even more favourable conditions".

"Clearly, Sanral’s multi-million rand marketing scheme has failed to inspire public confidence in their systems, which, compounded by security breaches, offensive remarks by their spokesperson, misleading statements, chaotic billing and erroneous data have done extreme harm to the legitimacy of the system,” said Outa.

President Jacob Zuma recently said Sanral e-toll billing mistakes are "unacceptable", which prompted Sanral CEO Nazir Alli to promise swift remedial action.

"However, complaints coming to Outa and other social media sites have not abated, with large fleet owners and logistic companies now adding their voices of concern and anger at the cumbersome adminisration and high cost impact that e-tolling is having on business," said Outa.

With President Zuma facing the most difficult year in his entire political career, "he doesn’t need the e-tolling albatross also hanging around his neck", said Outa.

"Outa calls on the president to display some civil courage in his State of the Nation speech on Thursday, by calling off the ill-conceived e-tolling system."

Zuma would do well to heed calls from Outa, trade union Cosatu and other bodies "to decontaminate the toxic public/political space ahead of the upcoming general election", said Outa.

"Admitting mistakes doesn’t come naturally to politicians and if President Zuma has aspirations to strong statesmanship, that is what he should do."
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OUTA is about right with the numbers. I do spot checks every week or so as my office have a good view allowing easily viewable windscreens of vehicles. The highest I got was 33 cars etagged out of 100.
 
creeper said:
OUTA is about right with the numbers. I do spot checks every week or so as my office have a good view allowing easily viewable windscreens of vehicles. The highest I got was 33 cars etagged out of 100.
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Same here.
Just heard a funny one. One guy in the office just received a invoice for his car, with the discount expiration date set for the 6'th of Feb. Not planning to pay, but decides to phone them to see what happens.

'Oh, don't worry sir, just pay what you think is fair and email us at [email protected].
What? Are you telling me you are not going to pay?
Well, can I just verify your details with you, to make sure I am speaking with the right person. Now, what is your email address?'

The guy tried about 4 times to get contact details out of him.
 
Compton_effect said:
Same here.
Just heard a funny one. One guy in the office just received a invoice for his car, with the discount expiration date set for the 6'th of Feb. Not planning to pay, but decides to phone them to see what happens.

'Oh, don't worry sir, just pay what you think is fair and email us at [email protected].
What? Are you telling me you are not going to pay?
Well, can I just verify your details with you, to make sure I am speaking with the right person. Now, what is your email address?'

The guy tried about 4 times to get contact details out of him.
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All he had to do was to spell out: [email protected]

And pay R0.01. Indicating that it is a fair value for past, present and future use
 
supersunbird said:
SANRAL lied, they said they road will be faster/have less traffic, the N1 south is very congested again in the mornings, same as before e-toll...
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R90bn later and they haven't made any substantial changes.

The original plan for the GFIP (way back +10yrs) was that additional on/off ramps would be added over all the bridge crossings, which would have had a real effect. Instead, for the most part, the same bottlenecks exist so there was no point in adding lanes to the highway. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that they needn't have bothered widening the highway at all if they'd instead added more on/off ramps.

IMHO the key problem is that the on/off ramps are way too sparse, which has the knock on effect of increasing secondary road traffic. In my neck of the woods additional off-ramps at Rabie/Hans Schoeman/C R Swart/Cumberland/Grosvenor/Main Rd crossings would probably relieve a huge amount of the congestion. E.g. how many people drive all the way to the Wm Nicol or Malibongwe off ramps only to backtrack along congested secondary roads to get into Bryanston? And that is another key gripe - it seems like the free way and the secondary roads are considered in isolation and there is no understanding of the interaction between them.

If they had least put some thought into the design of the GFIP then I *might* have considered paying a *modest* toll, but it's as if "experts" who really don't understand the traffic in the area just decided (with their billion Rands "feasibility studies") that the easiest route was to just build a gazillion lanes on the free way, whack up toll gantries and to hell with everything else.
 
garp said:
R90bn later and they haven't made any substantial changes.

The original plan for the GFIP (way back +10yrs) was that additional on/off ramps would be added over all the bridge crossings, which would have had a real effect. Instead, for the most part, the same bottlenecks exist so there was no point in adding lanes to the highway. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that they needn't have bothered widening the highway at all if they'd instead added more on/off ramps.

IMHO the key problem is that the on/off ramps are way too sparse, which has the knock on effect of increasing secondary road traffic. In my neck of the woods additional off-ramps at Rabie/Hans Schoeman/C R Swart/Cumberland/Grosvenor/Main Rd crossings would probably relieve a huge amount of the congestion. E.g. how many people drive all the way to the Wm Nicol or Malibongwe off ramps only to backtrack along congested secondary roads to get into Bryanston? And that is another key gripe - it seems like the free way and the secondary roads are considered in isolation and there is no understanding of the interaction between them.

If they had least put some thought into the design of the GFIP then I *might* have considered paying a *modest* toll, but it's as if "experts" who really don't understand the traffic in the area just decided (with their billion Rands "feasibility studies") that the easiest route was to just build a gazillion lanes on the free way, whack up toll gantries and to hell with everything else.
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Yes, only new off-ramps (2) and onramps (2) in Pretoria East, a greatly improved Allandale, a slightly improved Rivonia and that's it!
 
garp said:
R90bn later and they haven't made any substantial changes.

The original plan for the GFIP (way back +10yrs) was that additional on/off ramps would be added over all the bridge crossings, which would have had a real effect. Instead, for the most part, the same bottlenecks exist so there was no point in adding lanes to the highway. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that they needn't have bothered widening the highway at all if they'd instead added more on/off ramps.

IMHO the key problem is that the on/off ramps are way too sparse, which has the knock on effect of increasing secondary road traffic. In my neck of the woods additional off-ramps at Rabie/Hans Schoeman/C R Swart/Cumberland/Grosvenor/Main Rd crossings would probably relieve a huge amount of the congestion. E.g. how many people drive all the way to the Wm Nicol or Malibongwe off ramps only to backtrack along congested secondary roads to get into Bryanston? And that is another key gripe - it seems like the free way and the secondary roads are considered in isolation and there is no understanding of the interaction between them.

If they had least put some thought into the design of the GFIP then I *might* have considered paying a *modest* toll, but it's as if "experts" who really don't understand the traffic in the area just decided (with their billion Rands "feasibility studies") that the easiest route was to just build a gazillion lanes on the free way, whack up toll gantries and to hell with everything else.
Click to expand...

GFIP phase 3 involves building new roads and off/on-ramps. Why this was not phase 1, I have no idea. I only have educated guesses, and that is that phase 3 is but a pipe-dream. They knew the backlash would happen, hence the deceitful public participation process. They only plan to erect gantries on existing roads. No new roads will be built...
 
DJ... said:
GFIP phase 3 involves building new roads and off/on-ramps. Why this was not phase 1, I have no idea. I only have educated guesses, and that is that phase 3 is but a pipe-dream. They knew the backlash would happen, hence the deceitful public participation process. They only plan to erect gantries on existing roads. No new roads will be built...
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Gosh, I don't think the Gauteng economy could survive yet another phase of GFIP.
 
garp said:
This is apt. JPSA just tweeted this:

Justice Project SA ‏@JPSAorg :
This slide comes from a 2009/10 presentation by Alex van Niekerk of #SANRAL, showing extent of GFIP #eTolls plans.

pic.twitter.com/7n3DYgmIGH

View attachment 99427
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That's the presentation I've been using when posting the same pic. They were sent my thread, so I wonder if they found it via there?

Although I'd be surprised if they didn't previously have it...
 
supersunbird said:
Thanks, I wonder what they think they can do to improve M1 and Marlboro and Grayston...
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From what I can see the "planned lane additions" is the only phase they've completed so far and this took how many years and how much cash? I can't see them actually managing to build 158km of new routes any time soon.
 
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