As tempers flared and arms waved in anger, voices were raised at a number of specialists called in to present various aspects of the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the proposed toll road, which would bring a new toll plaza at Park Rynie and even closer to home at Isipingo as well as several ramp plazas in the Toti, Athlone Park area.

“You are just going to fleece us,” one man yelled at traffic specialist Willie Pienaar, who was surrounded by angry residents at the public open day in the town’s civic centre.

One irate man voiced his objections at Pienaar, then left to write down his official comment: “This is manipulation at its best,” he maintained.

‘This is manipulation at its best’
“Look I am paying for two children to go to university. You worry about your job. Now, we could be faced with toll fees,” said the exasperated protester, who merely gave his name as “Rob”.

Asked at the end of the evening if the Daily News could speak to him, one weary specialist, who was earlier surrounded by upset residents, Professor Christo Bester said: “As long as you don’t swear at me (like others had).”

The public open day was just one of 17 being held at central locations along the route of the proposed project. The plan aims to provide an improved, shorter and safer road link between the Eastern and Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Some 300 people turned up on Tuesday night - others had attended during the day - and most backed calls from Ted Holden, chairman of the upper South Coast anti-toll alliance (representing some 300 000 members), for a proper public sit-down question and answer session, instead of last night’s gathering where they could talk to specialists, study the proposed routes, fill in comment sheets and read the bulky EIA report.

Holden said that he wanted a public meeting in the third week of January, when South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) should invite traffic and transport specialists “to explain to us in clear terms the strategic and future scenarios of how transport in our metropolitan area will be addressed and whether tolling the N2 fits in with their plans”.

‘We know there is a lot of resentment here and we understand that’
He wants an independent judge to chair the meeting and says that the closing date for submissions on the draft EIA should be extended from January 9 to February 18.

Holden said that if his request for a public meeting was denied, he would make it known in his submission to Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

Local resident Roy Olckers said that at the last public meeting in 2006, people had almost come to blows about the issue.

“We have waited all this time and are still addressing the same thing. We are not opposed to roads in the Transkei, but we object to having to pay for them here,” he said.

Local business leaders, representing the Durban South Basin, the Southgate Business Park, Umbogintwini Industrial Complex and major industry in the area, also called for a proper question and answer session “as nothing is recorded here” and an extension of the January 9 closing date.

“These proposals (the toll fees) are going to have a huge economic impact on the businesses here and a knock-on effect on sub-contractors. There has got to be a greater level of public participation, particularly when it comes to the economic and social impact in this area. This report has not gone into that detail,” said Aldine Armstrong, the consortium’s lawyer.

Professor Bester, who did an economic analysis of the road, although he had not been told where the tolls would be or what would be charged, said that there was going to be cross-subsidisation.

“But my plea is for that cross-subsidisation to be reasonable and not unreasonable,” he said.

Asked about the possibility of a question and answer type of public meeting, Julian Drew of NMA Effective Social Strategists, the independent environmental consultants which drew up the draft EIA, referred to the one held two years ago.

Tuesday night’s session was more consultative, whereas a public meeting did not go into detail, he said.

“We know there is a lot of resentment here and we understand that. A similar meeting had been held in Scottburgh on Monday and “similar sentiments had been expressed”, he said.

Details of the draft EIA are available in libraries and on the websites www.ccaenvironmental.co.za and www.nra.co.za

Tony Carnie

DURBAN commuters and businessmen have been urged to gather in their thousands in Amanzimtoti at 6.30pm tonight to oppose plans to build new toll plazas at Isipingo and Park Rynie, as part of the N2 Wild Coast toll road proposal. (more…)

ETHIKWINI has come out with fists swinging, charging that Durban motorists and other KwaZulu-Natal road users will not be turned into cash cows for the SA National Roads Agency because of a tollgate proposed for the new King Shaka Airport. (more…)

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

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:

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)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)