Reminder to all Anti Toll Motorists & Residents

Amanzimtoti show your displeasure to the Consultants and SANRAL.

Reminder to all Anti Toll Motorists & Residents

Draft EIA Open House at the Toti Civic Centre 18th Nov2008 @ 16h30.

Do not waste your valuable time paging through a set of documents presented by the Independent Consultants who get their instructions and payment from SANRAL.
If you have the time the Executive Summary is enough to make you realize that there are many significant facts that affect us here on the Upper South Coast that wont be found in the 1000 pages of considerably biased justification you are expected to swallow, then allow SANRAL to go ahead with making us on the Upper South Coast pay for the 90 km of new road on the Wild Coast.

We will ask the Consultants to try to answer and dispute the following and a whole lot more.

Why no mention:
– Of the fact that a railway link will be the appropriate answer to all the needs of all people rich & poor, particularly in terms of affordable, safe, environmentally friendly transport, reducing heavy traffic on already overloaded roads and move agricultural and other goods and people for the sustainable future without fossil fuels been burnt and polluting our area.
- Of an alternate road around the outskirts towards the west of eThekwini.
- Of the fact that the Toll Gate at Isipingo will collect 86% of the cost of the 90 km strip of road on the Wild Coast at todays prices over 30 years, never mind the escalation in traffic and inflation.
- Of the fact that we are expected to pay 86 % of the cost for a road off which we will at most only use 15 km or only 2.68 %
- Of how the E Tag system is going to know that you came through the Main Toll Gate at Isipingo and left at the Joyner Ramp a distance of less than 1.5 km which will cost you R8 minimum.
- Of the fact that this new road is going to attract a considerable amount of traffic from west of eThekwini and put considerable strain on an already overloaded N3 and the poor unsuspecting motorist who have to access the N2 coming down the N3 and vice versa during peak times already a nightmare how will this be solved..
- Of how widening the N2 between Adams Road and Isipingo is going to be done.
- Of how the additional flow of traffic from the west is going to negate the widening of the road and loose any benefit of cutting down traveling time and justifying the toll payment.
- Of how we as motorists have no other alternative of traveling to and from our work place or schooling because of total lack of reliable safe and affordable public transport have now to bear the additional cost of being taxed to use an existing 60 year old road.
- Of why because our government has failed to provide enough funds to ensure that enough moneys is allocated to the provision and upkeep of our road net work, that SANRAL now feel they have the right to unfairly tax us on the Upper South Coast to pay for a road in another province.
- That if eThekwini had the full say over all the roads in the Metropolitan area as they should have, they would have insisted that the Developers of Arbour Town would have to pay the cost of widening the road from Winklespruit to Moss Kolnik because the shopping centre would be the main beneficiaries and also the cause of increased traffic on the road.

One is faced with an obvious question and that is seeing that there is a Government legislation that requires all these facts to be considered why this has not been done

I.e. National Environmental Management Act (NEMA)
Chapter 1 – Principles – sub section 2
Chapter (4) (i) The social, economic and environmental impacts of activities, including disadvantages and benefits must be considered, assessed and evaluated, and decisions must be appropriate in the lights of such consideration and assessment.

USCATA Nov 2008


WILD COAST TOLL ROAD – Nov 08

It has been reported that both the Cape Town City Council and Western Cape Provincial authorities have expressed their concern that their opposition to the tolling of the proposed N2 Winelands toll road has not been acknowledged or recognised by South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL).

We know that SANRAL is committed to trying to improve South Africa’s road network. We know too that of the R44 billion the government received in 2006 from road users, only R10.6 billion was spent by the state in 2004/05 on building and maintaining national and provincial roads.

SANRAL’s budget allocation for 2004 was R1.4 billion, hardly adequate to maintain, never mind improve the national road network. SANRAL therefore proposes to overcome its shortages of income through tolling.
Has the time not come for the government to revise its policy and provide funding for roads that the communities prioritize, so that we don’t get roads built because they can be profitable, often through the policy of “unsolicited bids”?

We now have the draft environmental impact report available for the controversial Wild Coast N2 toll road. Quite apart from the highly debatable merits and demerits of the SANRAL Greenfields route between Mthatha and Port Edward (more specifically, between Lusikisiki and Port Edward), the probable tolls listed in the report are as follows:

PROPOSED TOLL SECTION
LENGTH OF PROPOSED
POSSIBLE RANGE OF TOLL TARIFFS
(R)
 
TOLL SECTION
(2006 prices; Class 1 vehicle)
   
Low
High
Mid
Mthatha to Ntafufu
92.3 km
16
43
27
Ntafufu to Southbroom
121.1 km
41
114
70

This means that in this highly impoverished area, a road which is meant to benefit the local people is going to cost at least R70 between Ntafufu and Port Edward. This road will further isolate the present commercial centres of Bizana, Flagstaff and Kokstad and will hardly benefit the people of that region. This is quite apart from the fact that the report concludes “the proposed new road is considered not ecologically sustainable”.
Surely it is time for the treasury to revise its position, communicating with local communities so that SA develops a road structure that not only takes in the needs of local communities, but recognises the constraints imposed by oil peak and climate change, all of which indicate the need for futuristic planning?
Yours sincerely,

Bishop Geoff Davies Executive Director (SAFCEI)


EIA for the N2 ‘ Wild Coast’ Toll road

Dear All
 
You may already be aware that the new scoping report and EIA for the N2 ‘ Wild Coast’ Toll road has been completed and is available for download from the websites www.nra.co.za or www.ccaenvironmental.co.za  or by contacting Theo Hansford. tel 011 447 6037 email theoh@nma.org.za [Read more...]


WILD COAST TOLL ROAD EIA PUBLIC PARTICIPATION FLAWED

Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC) calls upon the government of South Africa to reject out of hand the latest attempt to gain support for the ill-conceived Wild Coast Toll Road. [Read more...]


Toll Road EIA

http://www.ccaenvironmental.co.za/


Miners still trying for Wild Coast highway

09 Nov 2008
Derek Alberts

LET it not be said that the proponents of the Wild Coast Toll Road and their partners in evil, the Australian mining company and their local BEE cohorts who want to mine the dunes for heavy metals, give up easily. [Read more...]


Double whammy toll plans

November 10, 2008 Edition 1

Tony Carnie

THE toll man plans to set up extra cash collection booths on two of Durban’s busiest freeways.

In the north, the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) has published plans to build a ramp plaza outside the new King Shaka International Airport to collect tolls of about R9 each from all Durban-bound cars leaving the airport along the N2 freeway. [Read more...]