Skip to main content

Johannesburg major cancels cycle lanes, stops chasing outstanding e-tolls

Johannesburg’s new mayor, Herman Mashaba, has promised motorists they can stop looking over their shoulders over e-toll payments, says Business Day Live. Making his inaugural council speech in Johannesburg, Mashaba said there would be ‘no cooperation’ between Johannesburg police and South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) on outstanding e-toll payments. Mashaba is also focusing on cleaning up the city’s finances, vowing to crack down on ‘fruitless and irregular expenditure’ incurred by city offic
September 15, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Johannesburg’s new mayor, Herman Mashaba, has promised motorists they can stop looking over their shoulders over e-toll payments, says Business Day Live.

Making his inaugural council speech in Johannesburg, Mashaba said there would be ‘no cooperation’ between Johannesburg police and South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) on outstanding e-toll payments.

Mashaba is also focusing on cleaning up the city’s finances, vowing to crack down on ‘fruitless and irregular expenditure’ incurred by city officials in the last financial year.

Also in his sights is what he sees as the city's unnecessary spending, particularly on the much-touted bicycle lanes and for marketing and advertising.

“I was concerned to note that US$5 million (ZAR70 million) has been set aside over the next three years for the development of bicycle lanes around our city. I intend putting a halt to this project. When every road in Johannesburg is tarred, maybe then we will look at bicycle lanes again,” said Mashaba.

Related Content

  • April 9, 2014
    ITS homes in on cycling safety
    A new generation of ITS equipment is helping road authorities get to grips with cycle safety – and not a moment too soon as Colin Sowman discovers. Cyclists - remember them? Apparently not. At least not according to the OECD 2013 report Cycling, Health and Safety which contains the statement: ‘Cyclists are often forgotten in the design of the road traffic system’. Looking through the statistics that exist (each country appears to compile them differently) it is not difficult to see how such a conclusion cou
  • December 10, 2015
    Phoenix rises to the Smart City challenge
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at the City of Phoenix where voters backed a $30bn plan to revamp its transportation network to cultivate a more connected community. According to a Land Use Institute study, half of all Americans and even more millennials (63%) would like to live in a place where they do not need to use a car very often. The City of Phoenix is putting in place plans to revamp its urban development and transportation policies to meet these changing quality of life perceptions.
  • June 26, 2018
    Fasten your seatbelts: it’s going to be a bumpy ride
    A spat has broken out between two major US transportation organisations over how best to pay for road use: the ATA says tolls are ‘fake funding’ while IBTTA has scorned ‘scare tactics and falsehoods’… Much has been made of the state of US roads: everyone agrees that funding is needed – but who should pay? And how? Chris Spear, president and CEO of American Trucking Associationsm(ATA), believes finance is facing a cliff edge: the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), historically the primary source of federal revenue
  • February 1, 2012
    South Africa's traffic management and enforcement gears up
    Paul Vorster, CEO of ITS South Africa, takes a look at the national enforcement situation in the year when the country gears up to host the FIFA Soccer World Cup. There are four main drivers pushing the growth of ITS-related law enforcement within South Africa. These are: transport operations associated with hosting the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010; traffic management linked to increasing congestion; the development of new public transport systems such as BRT; and vehicle and driver-related crime.