SA's roads 'a concern' - minister

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Road construction, maintenance and access remain among the biggest obstacles to community and economic upliftment, Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele said on Monday.

Addressing a transport summit in Midrand, Ndebele said while the country was on track in improving major city roads and highways, people in rural areas still did not have access to basic services.

"All they want is for the road to provide them with access to social and economic amenities and to improve their mobility."

He said the latest figures showed that a number of schools and hospitals were without road access.

Of the 5401 hospitals and schools in the Eastern Cape, 859 could not be accessed by road.

All the other provinces also had access problems.

Ndebele said that on average more than 30% of roads were in a poor or very poor condition.

The total of paved and gravelled road at provincial level sits at 40%.

Roads older than 20 years

"We know that about 80% of our roads network is now older than the 20 year design life based on information from 64% of the roads primarily national, provincial and [in] some cities."

He said it was difficult to verify the extent of the crisis at municipal level as there was a lack of information and support systems at this level.

"Now this is a matter of greater concern to us."

He said the country needed a R75 billion investment over the next five years to arrest this decline.

One way to fund this was to ensure that the money allocated from the Treasury was "ring-fenced" so that it could not be redistributed to another department.

He said another concern was that between 140 000km to 220 000km of roads were unproclaimed, meaning that they were not formally adopted as part of the official transport network.

"Legally no authority can spend money on roads that are not proclaimed," he said, adding that the uncertified access roads were typically in rural areas, meaning the majority of the country's people were left wanting for development and road maintenance.

Challenges

He said while maintenance was continuing, there were problems.

"The biggest challenge with roads is that by the time a problem is visible on the road surfaces, we are somewhat late with remedial  action.

"On the other hand, while a road might be deteriorating without showing the stress on the surface, we often do not see the need to do the necessary interventions."

The department was trying to ensure heavy loads of equipment were rather moved by railway than using motorised transport.

This would help to maintain road surfaces but needed effective law enforcement to control overloading.

Referring to the upcoming 2010 Fifa World Cup, Deputy Minister Jeremy Cronin said he felt the developed world would be "favourably surprised" by South Africa's transport network, while Africa and third world countries would probably express envy.

Declining since the '70s

However, this only applied as they would be visiting built-up metropolitan areas and would not be venturing off the beaten track where infrastructure was still sorely needed.

He was quick to add that the problem of the deteriorating and non-existent road infrastructure was not a result of the post apartheid government legacy, but had rather been declining since the '70s when the then government showed signs of toppling.

He urged the delegates to the seminar to be constructively critical in order to address construction and road maintenance problems.

"There are no holy cows in this discussion, we want you to be critical."

This sentiment was echoed by Ndebele, who said: "If solutions cannot be found by this brains trust then those solutions do not exist anywhere else in the country".

Among those attending the summit were transport MECs, heads of departments from provincial level, the SA National Roads Agency and the road traffic management co-operation.

The summit would continue on Tuesday.