The toll gates, they cometh!

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 17 Oct 2007

The SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) plans to ring Johannesburg and highways leading east from the city, as well as Pretoria, with up to 46 electronic toll gates, each charging motorists a proposed R3.30 a time.

The gates, approximately 11km apart, will be in place by 2015 and will allow the financing of a new Johannesburg-Pretoria highway, as well as the upgrade of several other roads. Construction workers are already widening stretches of the N1 where it runs through the east of Pretoria.

According to reports, the upgrades and new construction will cost R23 billion, down from earlier estimates of R60 billion. Sanral toll technology manager Ian Liebenberg says the cost of the toll technology must still be determined.

Tenders to run the Gauteng freeway system, as well as to install the required technology, will be issued next year. In the meantime, the public has until 14 November to comment on the idea.

"The public now has the opportunity to comment on everything pertaining to the toll road scheme. Obviously most of the comments will be about the cost to motorists," he says.

Setting the standard

Unlike existing toll plazas, the Gauteng freeway system will automatically collect tolls using an open road tolling (ORT) or multi-lane free-flow approach. "It means there is a small transponder, the size of a cigarette box, on your window, called an 'e-tag'," he says. This is already in use on the Bakwena toll road [on the N4 between Pretoria and Rustenburg]."

Liebenberg says the Bakwena system uses the European CEN278 GSS A1 standard. To ensure the Gauteng system is interoperable with the Bakwena system, the same standard has been adopted for Gauteng's highways.

At any one of the 46 toll gates, the transponder will communicate with a reader placed on a gantry over the road and generate a back-office transaction.

Liebenberg says the system will be the "biggest ORT scheme in the world" to date. "It will be bigger than those in Chile and Australia, which use the same standard. Quite a few reference sites in the world use [the CEN278 GSS A1] standard," he adds.

Cost considerations

The Sanral toll technology manager notes that the toll of R3.30 for vehicles fitted with transponders is still just a proposal.

"It is not carved in stone as yet," he says. Vehicles not fitted with the technology will be tolled at a rate that is 40% higher, he warns.

Liebenberg says the pricing structure of the transponders must also still be determined. He notes that the transponders used along the Bakwena toll route cost R200.