Joburg traffic reaches new low in chaos

Last Wednesday, traffic was nightmarish if you were trying to get out of Blairgowrie onto Jan Smuts.

It wasn’t just the people in the Johannesburg northern suburb that were affected by delays that stretched for more than an hour just to transit or exit the suburb, people heading south into town were caught in it.

People heading north were caught up in it, too.

We are not at Cape Town levels of congestion yet, but last week was a new low for Joburg.

And it was all because the traffic lights on Jan Smuts that were functioning were out of sync.

As usual, the traffic cops were nowhere to be seen, which is a pity because people get enraged and start behaving appallingly selfishly – and incredibly dangerously, jumping the red traffic lights that do work and driving down oncoming lanes.

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It’s rare that you see a metro cop directing traffic when an intersection loses its lights because of load shedding, drunken driving or simple vandalism.

Instead, in Joburg we cope with insurance-sponsored points men or entrepreneurial vagrants.

Where you do find the metro cops is on off-ramps just after you get off the highway or closing off a lane in a two-lane road for a quick municipal shake down – normally at the most inconvenient time.

It starts with the licence disc and maybe being asked to show your driver’s licence.

If either of those have expired it’s a walk to the little caravan at the roadside to check on outstanding fines.

It’s not that the metro cops are doing it that is irritating, it’s that they are not doing it properly.

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They don’t even have to direct traffic, just ditch the carbon copy fine books that probably predate the rotary telephone, go digital and sweep down like avenging angels on any idiot that breaks the highway code.

It’s not difficult.

The metro cops can just scan the licence registration disc on the windscreen and the driver’s licence barcode (like gate guards do in almost every office park and lifestyle estate in town) and Bob’s your Uncle, if you have outstanding fines, the next time you get stopped it’s off to the caravan to kak en betaal or even get arrested and your vehicle impounded.

Joburg wouldn’t have a revenue deficit, drivers wouldn’t start behaving worse than taxi drivers, we might even have working traffic lights.

To paraphrase John Lennon, Imagine all the people…