Roads agency has big plans for road infrastructure

During a press briefing, the agency outlined short-term initiatives to address damage caused by the heavy downpours and flooding, and medium-term plans to repair ailing road infrastructure.

The agency intends working seven days a week to repair the 12 703 potholes and 37 545 patchings on the city’s road network, and some of

the city’s 2 114 traffic signals damaged by rain.

It will cost the agency an estimated R23 million to repair road infrastructure and about 887 storm water drains, bringing these to the condition that they were in prior to the heavy rains.

Comparing potholes to flu, the agency’s managing director, Skhumbuzo Macozoma said, “When you’ve got flu and you cough a lot, it is a

symptom. So you can get a cough mixture and deal with the cough. But until you have addressed the flu, the coughing will not go away.”

He added that potholes often occurred on roads that were in very poor condition and therefore roads needed to be improved to minimise

potholes.

To this effect he said R1.8 billion was allocated last year for a three-year programme to maintain roads that were in a fair condition and to

repair roads that were in very poor condition. This included the road infrastructure upgrade in Johannesburg, with a focus on the M1 and M2 highways and major routes serving commercial hubs such as Sandton and Rosebank.

Resurfacing, for which R100 million has been budgeted in 2014, would be used to maintain the condition of good roads that were starting

to lose their surface quality, Macozoma explained.

“Rather save what can still be rescued than spend a lot of money fixing what is already damaged.”

Further, he said, rehabilitation and reconstruction would target roads that were poor and very poor.

“What we are going to do there is dig up the roads that are gone… and reconstruct them. If we find that some layers are still okay, we going to dig up one or two layers and fix them.”

Budget allocations of R160 million in 2015 and R220 million in 2016 have been made for these ongoing programmes. Repairs and rehabilitation of bridges and culverts would cost about R37 million, he said.

Nine bridges and culverts had been prioritised for reconstruction and upgrade in Northriding, Bryanston, Douglasdale, Ivory Park

and Sandton.

Work had already started on some of the roads, said the agency’s regional operations head, Hendrik van Tonder.

However, progress would be determined by the weather conditions.