The roll-out of e-tolling on Gauteng’s freeways was a “good workable system”, said Imperial Logistics chief integration officer Cobus Rossouw on Wednesday, speaking in his personal capacity.

Delivering a presentation at the Southern African Transport Conference, held in Pretoria, he considered the multibillion-rand price tag on the freeway expansion project – to be paid for through e-tolling –  as “relatively low when looking at the potential benefits”.

Rossouw added that the freight industry and Gauteng commuters could ill afford the heavy congestion seen five years ago, before the widening and upgrading of the province’s freeways.

He said that he had been surprised by the emotional response to e-tolling, as there were “much bigger fish to fry”. He questioned why South Africans did not have the same response to the country’s arms deal, for example, which was tainted by corruption – even though “we were paying for it every day”.

In order to make the Gauteng e-toll process – currently the subject of a government revision process as well as legal action – a beneficial one, it could be used to decrease the passenger vehicle traffic load on freeways through increasing the number of passengers travelling in a car, suggested Rossouw.

It was also possible to “actively use” the off-peak discounts proposed in the e-toll system to further increase traffic efficiency.

Rossouw added that there were “huge opportunities” to turn the billing data for the millions of vehicles on Gauteng’s roads into traffic intelligence data, while also using it to inform future government decisions.

The system, tracking vehicles constantly, could identify bottlenecks in the road network which required capacity expansion by government.

The e-toll system would also be able to root out “nonconformance in the logistics industry”.

In the end, said Rossouw, it was a basic truth that effective freight logistics required freeway capacity.

“We need to move things around.”

Congestion was the enemy of this efficiency, he added, as it increased travel time and unpredictability.

“And then we have to plan to be inefficient.”

Rossouw does not believe the Gauteng freeway improvement project could be funded through the fuel levy – a popular argument against the roll-out of e-tolling.

He said this was only possible in a perfect world and that the South Africa government had more pressing social priorities placing demands on its tax income.

Even if a new fuel levy was ring-fenced to pay for the freeway project, it would still be a direct tax, and not only imposed on those using the province’s roads.

On the question of whether international companies were making marked financial gains on the back of the local project – another critique of the system – Rossouw suggested that any flaws in the tender should be stated and dealt with.

He also attempted to dismantle another popular argument, that holds that “e-tolling would never work”.

He said beam-tolling, as currently found on long-distance toll roads, was not effective and could not substitute e-tolling.

He also asked whether South Africa could not simply “make it work”.

Rossouw admitted, however, that conformance would be a challenge in the e-tolling system.