Copyright © 2001 FleetWatch magazine and FleetWatch On-Line.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publishers. Views published are not necessarily those of the publishers.

South Africa's road network, conservatively estimated to be worth R550-billion, is deteriorating at an alarming rate with the under-funding of road maintenance over the past 25 years being the prime cause of the problem. 

This is according to the South African Road Federation (SARF), a non-political organisation representing all bodies in South Africa that have an interest in any aspect of the road industry and road administration. Its key agenda is the development of South Africa's road network, its effective and safe operation and the development of the country's road sector as a catalyst for South Africa's economic and social development.

SARF executive director and former deputy director general of the Department of Transport (DoT), Dr Malcolm Mitchell, says road users are taxed some R43-billion a year of which only R13-billion is fed back into the network. 

"Road authorities have recently had their budgets significantly increased and SARF believes that the major portion should be allocated to preserving the country's road network. To do otherwise will be courting disaster," he says, adding that it is well known that if roads are not repaired timeously, costs can rise sevenfold.

"If we want to reinstate the road network to its condition of 15 years ago, it will require additional funding of approximately R10-billion annually over and above existing expenditure," he observes.

Road deterioration is measured on the Visual Condition Index (VCI), a system of road erosion measurement used by the Department of Transport (DoT). Based on the last survey conducted by DoT, roads deteriorated from a 'good' in 1988 to 'fair to poor' in 1999.

National roads, efficiently managed by the National Roads Agency, maintained their condition rating, as did roads in the Northern Cape where traffic was low and ground conditions good. In KwaZulu-Natal, however, traffic was high and ground conditions poor and as a result, roads deteriorated from 'good' to 'poor'.

"All indications point to the general neglect of maintenance on many of the country's roads and any road maintenance that does take place appears to be patchy and haphazard, rather than planned and systematic," says Mitchell, adding that potholes are now a major problem, causing accidents and widespread damage to vehicles.

"For instance," he says, "on the N12 between Bloemhof and Christiana, the speed limit has had to be reduced to 60km due to the prevalence of potholes and on some sections of the road cars have to slow down to a snail's pace to avoid major damage. Similar situations exist on too many other stretches of the country's roads." 

Mitchell says that a general rule of thumb on the competency of any road authority is the speed at which potholes are repaired.

"In more developed countries, 72 hours is the norm. On major freeways in the USA, 24 hours is the rule. Six to nine months seems to be the norm in South Africa and this can extend to two or even three years."
 

Well maintained The part of the network falling under SANRA’s responsibility is well maintained. The rest of the network has been severely neglected over the past 15 years. But government has moved strongly away from the brink in terms of allocations over the past three years.

Mug half-full or half-empty?
Editor's Note: SARF's views expressed above were run in Business Day which prompted a response sent to FleetWatch by Don Ross, Professor, School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and Professor, Department of Philosophy and Department of Finance, Economics and Quantitative Methods, University of Alabama at Birmingham USA. He submitted his opinion under the heading: 'The Nation's Roads: Mug Half-Full or Half-Empty?' which we publish here as we feel it will be of interest to our readers and adds interesting fuel to the debate.

Is South Africa sorting out its inherited problems quickly enough? On the one hand, we might think we should always and automatically answer "no" to this sort of question - no matter our actual progress - because to do otherwise is to be complacent. On the other hand, there is reason to answer "yes", at least where we are roughly keeping up with targets because to do otherwise is to foster pessimism and reward nay-sayers who would have us believe that transformation is hopeless.

This general dilemma lately confronts people who set out to comment on our road maintenance backlog. Since Trevor Manuel's 2006 national budget, I have been pointing out that for the first time in nearly twenty years, the three levels of government, together with the South African National Roads Agency (SANRA), have among them allocated enough resources to roads to begin reversing net deterioration of the network.

Though warning that allocating funds is not the same thing as spending them, I have been urging that we celebrate this move across the 'shadow line' - the threshold of investment below which we move backward on the margin because roads become progressively more expensive to maintain the longer they're allowed to decay.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Mitchell of the SARF is taking the same situation as a basis for leading the anti-complacency charge. Dr Mitchell says that whereas South Africans are taxed about R43-billion per year directly for their use of roads, only about R13-billion of this is fed back into the network. He uses a vivid comparison to draw attention to our inadequacy in response to deterioration: In the United States, he says, the norm for repairing potholes on major freeways is 72 hours whereas in South Africa it is six to nine months - and some potholes linger for years. Finally, he says that since 1988, the condition of the network has gravely declined and that road authorities "court disaster" if they fail to spend an additional R10-billion on maintenance.

Is either me or Dr Mitchell wrong and the other one right, or are we both looking at the same mug of beer and respectively pronouncing "half full!" and "half empty!"? To judge the matter just from Dr Mitchell's quoted remarks, it's the latter.

Dr Mitchell takes 1988 as the benchmark year against which to measure deterioration. That choice will yield the most alarming comparison possible because 1988 was the point where the ratio of road asset value to re-investment shortfall was highest. During the 1990s, maintenance budgets became truly miserable, abetted by two declines in the Rand that were not made good by nominal increases in road budget allocations. As a result, the year in which marginal shrinkage of road asset value peaked was 2001.

The Ross Report on road under-capitalization, commissioned by the Southern African Bitumen Association (SABITA), was written that year. Unsurprisingly, the tone my co-authors and I adopted in that report was similar to Dr Mitchell's today. But our national road situation in 2006 looks much better by comparison to 2001 than it does to 1988. Is that good or bad news? Well, it's really some familiar older bad news leavened, to some extent, by newer good news.
 

If we want to reinstate the road network to its condition of 15 years ago, it will require additional funding of approximately R10-billion annually over and above existing expenditure  Dr Malcolm Mitchell

Patchwork quick fixes which don’t last are a pure waste of funds

Some of the figures Dr Mitchell is quoted as offering are challenged. Thus, for example, Collen Msibi is cited in Business Day as saying on behalf of the Transport Department that, in fact, potholes on national roads - SANRA's roads - are typically fixed in one day. This is a just point. The repair time norm for the USA quoted by Dr Mitchell is for major freeways. Let us compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.

Is it nevertheless correct that we need an additional R10-billion for road maintenance? Mr Mbisi calls this number a "thumb-suck," while reminding all that government has been - and is still - increasing investment in road preservation. Both men's comments are reasonable.

Dr Mitchell is right that if total investment in roads were only R13-billion, this would leave us short of the shadow line; whereas R23-billion would put us comfortably across it. R13-billion is, in fact, below what has been allocated to roads for coming years if all sources of investment are considered, so Mr Mbisi has a point too. It is doubtful that SA's road maintenance industry could nearly double output capacity in a single budget jump.

The key facts - on which, as far as I can see, all concerned parties agree - are as follows: The part of the network falling under SANRA's responsibility is well maintained though, in light of rising costs of materials, SANRA will need to increase its revenues for this to continue to be so. The rest of the network has been severely neglected over the past 15 years. But government has moved strongly away from the brink in terms of allocations over the past three years.

We now need urgently to ensure that these new allocations are, in fact, spent efficiently on road maintenance with priority to those roads which are of greatest economic importance. This will not follow automatically from good intentions. If we spend net R23-billion on road maintenance, we'll make progress in restoring this deteriorated part of our crucial basic infrastructure, as Dr Mitchell says. Government shows every intention of aiming to do this, as Mr Mbisi says. It is the responsibility of all of us to monitor this intention, and its execution, closely.

The mug is of course not half-full or half-empty. It is both at once. We should thus be pleased that we're making progress and vigilant to ensure that we continue to do so.

Editor's Footnote: So what's your opinion? C'mon Mr Operator. Your trucks are out there everyday. Are we making progress or are our roads deteriorating to a dangerous level. If you read the article headed 'R5,747-billion knock-on costs to South Africa' published elsewhere in this edition, you will realise the importance to your own operations of having a well maintained and effective road network. An example used by author of that article, Max Braun, demonstrates that if one assumes damaged roads add 11 cents per kilometre to vehicle operating costs (5 cents per kilometre (CPK) to maintenance, 1 CPK to tyres and another 5 CPK to fuel) when measured against just 90 000 heavy vehicles (approximately 35% of total trucks with a gross mass above 3500 kg) travelling an average of 100 000 km a year, this equates to an astronomical R990-million added cost per year. The roads issue is a vitally important one to debate so what's your opinion? Is South Africa doing OK on its road network or not? Let's hear your views. E-mail the Editor at fleetwatch@pixie.co.za.