Road Trip to the Mother City #10: The Long Road Home

Sunday was our drive home…
We set off again in the early hours and managed to arrive in Laingsburg just as the sun was rising and about to blind us.
By the time we arrived in Three Sisters Ulricha and I were both exhausted. We had already driven for just shy of 5 and a half hours, and knew the longest stretch of rode was still to come. Already the temperature was starting to reach toward the 30 degree mark – and that was at 9 o’clock, as we enjoyed breakfast in an air conditioned greasy spoon.

We decided to take an alternative route home – hoping to avoid the 6 sets of road works that are currently under way on the N1 motor way between Three Sisters and Springfontein. Instead, we opted for the alternative route through Kimberley, a route we had not tried before. We set off, Ulricha at the wheel, toward Kimberley.

The road itself to Kimberley is in good order, but the scenary is slightly different. As Ulricha said, “This is truly the Karoo” Mile after lonely mile the road stretched, like a piece of liquorice draped over a dry and thirsty earth. There was much less traffic and often we would find ourselves the only car on the road – with no companion vehicles as far as the eye could see.

By the time we had reached Kimberley, our illusions of having selected a more convenient route had been shattered, by a more than useful family member who informed me that there were no less than 5 sets of road works on the N12 motorway. My spirits sank, but fortunately, I negotiated all 5 with only a delay of 7 minutes where we had to wait for the oncoming traffic.

The quality of the road surface had deteriorated though, the yellow line hard shoulder had all but disappeared, and the driving on the streth from Warrenton to Klerksdorp was very sapping and exhausting. Once again we swapped the driver, and Ulricha “brought us home”.

By this stage we were all but exhausted. The type of exhaustion that deflates you, when your spirit is so low, and all you want to do is get home. It was then that the N12 served up its trump card – traffic lights and stop streets!

It was a good experience, and cheaper than paying for the 3 toll roads through the Free State – but exhausting, and more stressful.

But we got home. We arrived safe and sound.
We had a fantastic week in Cape Town. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously. We took nearly 1,000 photographs in that time! (I apologise that this has perhaps been more of a PHOTO BLOG in the last week than anything else – but when you are surrounded by beauty, you simply have to share it!)

But as much as we enjoyed ourselves, we were just happy to once more be home.

Road trip to the Mother City #2: What benefits from tolling our roads?

Can someone explain to me what the benefits are of toll roads in South Africa?

I have just used the N1 from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and was fortunate enough to only have to use 4 toll roads along the way.

Now my idea of a toll road is that I am required to pay an extra charge for the use of the road, but that the road provides me some extra benefit. So therefore I understand paying a toll for the Hugenot Tunnel near Paarl – where the tunnel through the mountain saves 12 kilometers off the trip, and significantly reduces the stress of the trip, that you don’t have to drive over the Du Toitskloof pass.

But what such benefit do the Grasmere, Kroonvaal or Verkeerdevlei toll roads provide?

To my mind, all I can see is that the maintenance of these national roads has been outsourced or subcontracted, to outside contractors, rather than a government agency or department. But I was taught at high school that roads are a “public good” (in the sense of being a commodity) and as such, I always thought that the government should be providing the public with good, safe roads – not just providing the public with arteries to travel, but delivering good transport links to the country’s economy. And this service is funded using the tax money that us good natured tax payers so happily pass over every pay day.

So perhaps then the toll should might rather be seen as a “pay as you drive” tax, something which targets those members of the public that most utilise this resource. So the more you use this, the more you would pay.
But surely this would mean that the taxes derived by tolling the users of the road, would therefore not have to be collected from the general public – meaning a reduction in tax paid by the public – either on their salaries, through fuel tax, or motor vehicle tax.

I am unaware of any such tax deductions having been passed over to the South African tax payer.

So what then do I get from paying a toll to use a motor way?

And the saga gets worse…
Between Springfontein and the Orange River there are no less than 3 stretches of road works where another toll road just looks destined to pop up it’s greedy green eyes in the near future.

I recently downloaded a map of the Toll Road locations throughout South Africa from the National Roads agency website, and it lists no less than 51 Toll Road locations. Some of these are sub-sections of the main toll roads, just to ensure that enough of the country is covered by tolls.

So please – with this phenomenon seemingly being so popular, please could someone tell me what benefit I derive from paying tolls on South African roads?