By: OrePulse

South Africa's Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) has introduced a new formula for calculating annual rail safety permit fees for the 2026/27 financial year, under which operators that run more trains or have worse safety records will shoulder a bigger share of costs, while the total amount collected is not meant to rise overall, the regulator said.

Celine Morolong, the RSR's Senior Manager for Corporate Communications, said the old formula had instead been built around each operator's siding length, a slice of its revenue, fixed flat charges and a risk-free-rate factor — measures she said bore little relation to the safety risk posed by an operator or the amount of regulatory work needed to oversee it. "The practical effect is redistribution rather than a general increase," Morolong said of the new approach.

The new formula breaks the annual fee into three parts — a base charge, a safety-linked charge and an activity-linked charge — with the activity portion set by how far an operator's trains run and how much they haul, whether that is tonnes of freight or numbers of passenger trips. Operators with higher activity levels or more severe safety occurrences will see their share of regulatory costs rise. In contrast, lower-risk operators may pay less depending on their level of activity, according to the RSR. Movements of dangerous goods carry a heavier weighting than general freight, which Morolong said reflects their "elevated consequence profile" and the additional regulatory oversight such movements require.

The RSR said the 2026/27 fees were based on confirmed operator figures for 2024/25 — the latest full year for which numbers were ready when officials finalized the new determination. Before using those figures, operators must submit activity numbers, which are then checked and reconciled. At the same time, records of safety incidents are cross-checked against the regulator's own files and weighted by how serious each incident was rather than added up. "This allows the safety component to reflect an operator's risk profile," Morolong said.

Because the formula resets each year, an operator's activity and safety trends will directly shape what it pays going forward — 2025/26 figures, once verified, will determine 2027/28 fees, the RSR said.

To soften the blow for operators facing the steepest increases under the new system, the RSR is phasing in the change over three years. According to the September 8 Government Gazette notice setting out the new fees, 28 operators are being moved onto the new model during the phase-in period — among them Transnet Rail Infrastructure Manager, Richards Bay Coal Terminal, Saflog and several mining companies. For those operators, the full financial impact of the new fee model will build up gradually rather than apply immediately.

Among the 28 operators moving to the new model are companies that haul minerals and bulk commodities for export, whose permit costs will now track more closely with how much freight they move and their recorded safety performance, rather than with revenue or the length of track siding they operate, according to the RSR's description of the new fee structure. The regulator said it would continue to reassess fees annually as new activity and safety data become available.