South Africa's bold all-electronic toll system on expressway network upgrade in Jo'burg

By April 2011 Johannesburg metro area in South Africa should have a world class all electronic toll (AET) system doing upwards of 2m toll transactions/day and collecting $500m/year. 10.5m in population Gauteng province comprises the major commercial city of Johannesburg the national administrative capital Pretoria and Soweto and other associated suburbs. There are some 2m motor vehicles in Gauteng Province and there's growth of 5 to 10% annually.


So when the South Africa national roads agency (SANRAL) and the province government came up with a Gauteng Freeway Improvement Program (GFIP) to improve traffic flow five years back there was strong political support. Phase 1 in construction now consists of work on 185km (115 miles) being rebuilt or built anew as expressway. It covers three national routes N1, N3, N12 and a regional R21.

The major expressways are being widened to 2x4 lanes, with some sections 2x6. Major interchange improvements are involved and pricing and ramp metering will be used to "manage" traffic. There will be special carpool/bus lanes.

Longer term 560km (348mi) of modern highway is being developed of which 180km (112mi) is completely new road and the remainder is existing highway being substantially upgraded, widened, and given grade separations to raise it to urban expressway standard. (Locally South Africans have picked up the confusing California term 'freeway', unacceptable here - editor)

Kapsch has contract to build toll system

Design, installation and operations of the all-electronic toll system was contracted Sept 18 to Kapsch (65%) and a local joint venture partner Traffic Management Technologies TMT (35%) at a price of $157m (ZAR1.16b @ 1ZAR =13.5c).

This is comparable with the interoperable 3-concession all-electronic system built in Santiago Chile that came on line the early years of the century. It is smaller than Germany's Toll Collect for tolling trucks - the world's largest all-electronic toll system by far. But it may turn out larger than 407ETR, the largest AET system in North America.

Involved are 44 double gantries for the mounting of toll equipment. One of the gantry pair does all vehicle detection, classification and reader signals (DSRC) and the front camera imaging. The other span supports rear imaging.

This system covers 44 one-directional toll points and covers 132 toll lanes.

Kapsch and their local joint venture aprtner have a contract to

(1) build the toll system

(2) operate the national transaction clearing House (TCH) and national violation processing center (VPC) for 5 years with an option for additional year, which include
billing, enforcement, payment collection, and customer interaction, and

(3) to operate the ORT system in the Province of Gauteng for 8 years, including
all 44 gantries and the ORT back office, which feds the national TCH and VPC

The transponder/reader system will be European CEN278 standard 5.8GHz.

Vehicle classification will be three vehicle sizes by volumetric scan based on video/stereo.

License plate reading cameras will provide for vehicles without a transponder. Cameras will operate to take frontage and rear pictures of each vehicle.

The initial system is designed to handle over 2m transactions a day and to generate about $700m tolls annually.

1.5m transponders are expected to go into use in the start-up years.

Mobile enforcement units (MEUs)

SANRAL plans to contract out enforcement by pulling over violators on the road or nearby  with so-called Mobile Enforcement Units - specially equipped police cars in effect. They will have the power to settle with violators by accepting penalty payments on the spot.

Kapsch's local joint venture partner Traffic Management Technologies (TMT) is the enforcement specialist.

Leading the Kapsch effort in Johannesburg Saladin Yacoubi, a  French engineer who was previously prominent in design of all-electronic toll systems in Melbourne Australia (CityLink) and in Santiago Chile.

Kapsch won the Gauteng toll systems contract in competition with finalists Autostrade of Italy and a Sanef/SICE joint venture.

The contract provides for:

- an open road or all-electronic toll system for Gauteng

- a Gauteng back office

- a transactions clearing house designed for nationwide tolling for SANRAL and concessionaires

- a violations processing center capable of nationwide toll enforcement

Johannesburg hosts the World Cup football tournament in late-2010. So part of the frenzy of highway building is to make the city work better for the international football fans.

Next major metro area to get all-electronic tolling in South Africa could be Cape Town, according to an official.

BACKGROUND: South Africa has 49m people of diverse origins, nearly four-fifths of native African extraction but over one fifth immigrants over many centuries from Europe, especially Holland, Belgium, Britain, and the Indian subcontinent, and mixed. The country is rich in natural as well as human resources and has strong legal and political institutions derived from a melding of British and native institutions, and a trading and finance heritage from Dutch, British, and Indian settlers.

At 1.2m km2 (470k sq mi) the land area is a bit larger than Texas (695k km2) and California (424k km2) combined. With two major ocean frontages and moderate latitude it has temperate climate.

It is close to the world average in percapita income or GDP/person (PPP) - in the same range as Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and most east European countries, Malaysia. A number of neighboring African countries have incomes that are a fraction of South Africa's so it is a big magnet for immigration.

Motor vehicle ownership in South Africa is middling too - around 0.15 vehicles per person about a half or a third the level of most European countries and a fifth of the level of the US and Australia,  a bit behind the richer Gulf countries, but ahead of Mexico, Russia, most of South America, and ten times the percapita level of India and China.

Gauteng meaning 'gold place' is the Sesotho or local tribal name for Johannesburg which was the center for an enduring mining industry that has produced great wealth in gold, diamonds and metals. This one very urban province extending from commercial Johannesburg in the south to governmental Pretoria in the north has a built up area about 100km (60 miles) north-south and averaging 40km (24 miles) east to west. At 10.5m it  houses 21% of the national population and about a quarter of the national economy.

Other major metro areas are ports - Cape Town the legislative capital, Port Elizabeth and Durban. But there are also new growth areas mostly along the southern and Indian Ocean coasts.

OTHER TOLLING: There are extensive interurban or rural tollroads in South Africa - both state developed along US lines, and private concessions along European/Australian/Asian/S American lines. The state toll agency SANRAL with government loan backing has 1832km (1138 miles) tolled and 1288km (800mi) are under private concession.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-09-29