EMM aware of road conditions

“After the recent heavy rains, which left a trail of destruction on our roads, we are paying special attention to the resulting potholes as well,” said Clr Gungubele.

He said this during his State of the City address on Wednesday, March 26, in Germiston.

When it comes to road maintenance, he said the EMM performed maintenance to 81.6 kilometres of roads as of the second quarter of the current financial year. During the same period, the EMM also performed maintenance on 92.1 kilometres of stormwater infrastructure.

With regards to Tembisa, the EMM has worked with the National Treasury to complete several plans. As a result, the National Treasury committed R8-million in the current financial year and have pledged an additional R50-million in the coming financial year.

The funds are for the implementation of catalytic projects in Tembisa. The city has already spent in excess of R20-million towards the urban renewal of Tembisa, undertaking projects that include link roads (portions of George Nyanga and Andrew Mapheto) in the vicinity of the Tembisa Civic Centre. The civic centre has been earmarked as a future Central Business district (CBD) of Tembisa and Winnie Mandela Square is a secondary node to service the northern part of Tembisa.

“The principal cause of the many transportation-related challenges faced emanate from the non-functional apartheid spatial form of the city. In addition to these, new challenges have emerged, which are largely due to local in-migration, continuous urban sprawl, including informal settlements, within the Gauteng City Region.”

This has led to growing dependence on private car use, which then leads to congestion, over-usage of roads, as well as a fragmented public transport network.

As one of 13 cities and towns in South Africa to implement the BRT system, Ekurhuleni has been working to roll out the project. Phase 1 of the BRT plan starts from Tembisa to Vosloorus via Kempton Park and the OR Tambo International Airport.

In order to roll out the BRT, Ekurhuleni first has to rollout the enabling infrastructure on which the buses will run.

According to the EMM, the road designs for Phase 1 have been prepared. Road construction along the Rev RTJ Namane Road in Tembisa has commenced, as well as Pretoria Road in Kempton Park, where feeder or complementary routes are being implemented, as well as pedestrian walkways and cyclist paths.

Construction of the feeder routes in Vosloorus is scheduled to start in April, while construction of the trunk route starting at the Tembisa Civic Centre towards Kempton Park will start in May 2014.

An extension of bus services and bus routes are also being introduced, namely an inter-city route from Vosloorus to Braamfontein, was introduced in September 2013, and two new routes. The one route runs from Meadowbrook to Johannesburg, and the other runs from Meadowbrook to Germiston.

More recently, the EMM also introduced three new routes – one from Katlehong to Rhodesfield, another from Vosloorus to Rhodesfield, and a third from Reiger Park to Rhodesfiled.

The effect of the last three new routes has been to link the municpal public transport provision to the Gautrain, thereby creating a link between road, rail and air transport within the broader context of the Ekurhuleni Aerotropolis.

In order to make this plan operational, the EMM has recruited 25 new bus drivers to support the introduction of these new bus routes. There are new routes in the pipeline, which will be announced in due course, as route licensing processes by the province get finalised.

“As we continue to make the mobility of our citizens easier, we have set aside a budget of R80-million over the next two years for the purchase of green buses that will service other parts of Ekurhuleni with little or no current public transport service.

The EMM has constructed 63.5 kilometres of new roads and 23 kilometres of new stormwater systems as of December 2013. This is in addition to the 168 kilometres of new roads constructed since 2011. Furthermore, the EMM constructed 6.7 kilometres of new pedestrian walkways and graded 87.3 kilometres of roads in informal settlements.

A proposal on how to deal with the impact of flooding in the city will be covered in the budget speech.