E-toll gantries are not coming down

South Africa’s transport minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga, has reiterated that the e-toll gantries on Gauteng highways will remain in place to combat crime and enhance road safety after the e-toll system is shut down.

In a media briefing on the scrapping of the e-toll scheme, the minister said the existing e-toll infrastructure will be repurposed to improve several aspects of the Gauteng highway system.

“We emphasised that the government was already far advanced with its plan to repurpose the e-toll infrastructure to improve mobility, road safety, and combat crime,” she said.

“It is important to note that while these roads are no longer going to be tolled, the benefits of improved roads remain, and the gantries that have been installed for use in the scheme will continue to be used for other functions, such as fighting crime.”

“The gantry lights and cameras will remain on for road safety purposes, but also for crime-fighting,” she added.

The minister said the government will officially scrap the e-toll scheme at 23:59:59 on Thursday, 11 April 2024. After this, customers will no longer be required to pay e-toll fees.

However, she noted that customers with active and current accounts can continue to use their e-tags for payments at toll plazas.

Chikunga said plans are in place to use the e-tags for other value-added services, such as parking.

E-toll stalls will also remain open as the tech could still be used for interoperability, account queries and other potential transport-related services, Chikunga said.

The plan to use e-toll gantries for crime-fighting in Gauteng has been on the cards for some time.

In July 2023, City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthathsi Modingoane told MyBroadband that the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department had applied to use the infrastructure.

“Kindly note that this is a National and Provincial matter. The Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) has applied and is currently consulting with Sanral to use the gantries for speed enforcement,” said Modingoane.

The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) issued a tender seeking contractors to take over the failed e-toll system in August 2022.

Among the possible services listed in the document, bidders could submit proposals to use the infrastructure for average-speed prosecution. It also said prospective bidders could monetise data already collected via the e-toll system.

The agency said the gantries could already do limited average speed enforcement. To this end, it said it had collected average speed data since April 2020 and recorded close to 12.6 million infringements.

16,225 of these infringements came in a single day.

The tender document specified that bidders must link the system to the National Traffic Information System (Natis) and other government departments.

“The [average speed over distance] system will interface with the Sanral accounting system to raise any potential invoices for payment of the part of the fine that is agreed to be due to Sanral,” it said.