The number of national and provincial roads in “poor” and “very poor” condition is more than double what it was 10 years ago and the number in “good” or “very good” condition is a third of what it was 10 years ago. These are some of the shock findings made in a new research report released by the Automobile Association of South Africa.

South Africa has 596 000km of roads and the replacement value of the country’s road network is estimated to be R1.047-trillion.  “South Africa’s roads need R100-billion spent on them to eliminate maintenance backlogs and current levels of funding are only a quarter of what is needed to maintain the country’s road network into the future.

It is obvious that the cost of operating a vehicle on poor roads is double that of good roads in terms of fuel, maintenance, delays and crashes. “Road conditions have being assessed using the Visual Condition Index which expresses the condition of a road from 0 (very poor, requires reconstruction) to 100 (very good). About 60% of national roads are in poor or very poor condition. The overall VCI for South Africa’s roads dropped from 65 in 1998 to 46 in 2008. “The report clearly shows that, in the long term, regular annual maintenance that prevents road deterioration costs about a quarter of allowing a road to deteriorate until it needs reconstruction. We need R32-billion a year to keep our roads in good shape – 1.5 percent of GDP. This is far less that the cost of traffic crashes, unnecessary road reconstruction and losses by the transport industry resulting from poor roads. If we don’t get serious about road maintenance now, in 30 years we might not have any sealed roads left to maintain.