By Buli Sonqishe
The Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) is going ahead with its plans to replace traffic circles with traffic lights around the Modderfontein area.
The JRA will replace the mini traffic circles at Queen Street/Johannesburg Road and Queen Street/Valley Road with signalised intersections.
The work will be funded by a developer, not the JRA.
This is despite concerns from some residents who feel installing traffic lights at these key intersections will negatively impact the residents living in and around the Lakeside shopping centre. Philip van der Klis, a resident of Lakeside Village, said despite the traffic impact studies that were conducted by JRA, he was still not convinced that removing the circles at Thornhill and Lakeside was the right solution.
“Installing traffic lights at the new Johannesburg Road intersection, at the top of Go-Ape, should be re-considered and a traffic circle installed,” said van der Klis.
The JRA spokesperson, Bertha Peters-Scheepers, said the decision for the removal of the traffic circles was warranted on the basis of a development application along Queen Street.
“The capacity of the mini circles is not sufficient to accommodate the additional traffic generated by the development.
“The intersections have to be converted to signalised intersections in order to accommodate the development rights.
“It is a commercial/retail development,” said Peters-Scheepers.
She said necessary consultations were conducted as all township applications are published for public comment.
Van der Klis insisted that
at the intersections will negatively impact the residents.
“Vehicles enter the circle at low speeds, at about 15 to 20km/h. Should there be an incident in the circle the risk of serious injury is low. Traffic circles eliminate the ‘beat the light’ scenario which helps to negate T-bone collisions, which more often than not, lead to serious injury.
“The fact that one does not have to stop completely at a traffic circle also reduces the risk of hijacking and street vendors, windscreen washers and smash-and-grab opportunists,” he said.
He said traffic circles alleviate the stop-go effect caused by traffic lights as the stop-and-go effect adds to traffic congestion.
“This is made worse should there be a power failure and the traffic lights stop working all together,” said van der Klis.
Peters-Scheepers said traffic in the area will be affected by any future development and changes to the network are done to accommodate economic growth and development rights.
She said residents are welcome to discuss the proposed changes needed to accommodate the additional traffic with the developer.
