Judge in toll roads case says City has ‘not been strong on explanation’ for delay of its application

17th August 2015

By: African News Agency

  

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A Western Cape high court judge has questioned how the court should deal with “the issue of delay, as the City has not been strong on explanation” in this regard in its application to have a decision to toll portions of the N1 and N2 set aside.

The Western Cape High Court has been hearing arguments in the case since Monday last week.

Earlier on Monday, the City’s lawyer Geoff Budlender reiterated their argument that the tolls project was not “financially and socially viable”.

He said the Transport Minister was given the most accurate estimate of R7.9-billion of the costs involved in 2008, but he told the court “we showed that actually R59-billion in today’s money is the lowest estimate.”

Budlender said “we now know as a matter of certainty that none of the decision-makers considered whether tolling the roads was socially or financially viable”.

In accordance with the Sanral Act, the transport minister and the Sanral board needed to make the decision to go ahead with the project, but the city contends that there was “fundamental illegality in that process”.

The transport minister approved the project in 2008, and portions of the N1 and N2 were declared toll roads then.

But the City only launched its application to have the decision reviewed and set aside four years later.

The question of delay has consistently come up, with Judge Ashley Binns-Ward raising this issue several times over the past week.

Last week, Sanral argued that the City wanted the court to reach back over a decade and undo everything that has been done in the interim, “rendering invalid and stillborn everything that has been undertaken and achieved over the last 12 years or more”.

But the City submitted that “the public will find it difficult to understand why they have to pay tolls unlawfully for thirty years because the City was late in bringing a review”.

It’s charged that the decision to proceed with the project was an “irrational one”.

Budlender told the court “what we do know is that Sanral does not seem very adept at managing its processes. There is a black hole or mystery as to what happened here”.

The City has estimated that toll fees will be set at three times what Gauteng toll road users pay, at 74c/km as opposed to 26c/km.

Edited by African News Agency

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