City to spend R200m on ‘smart’ traffic lights for Joburg

The City of Joburg will be spending about R200 million over the next three years to implement a smart traffic light monitoring and maintenance system that promises to put an end to traffic jams as a result of faulty “robots”.

The project is aimed at improving the maintenance of traffic lights and the response and down time when a traffic light is reported as faulty.

This was announced on Wednesday by the city’s mayor, Herman Mashaba, at the launch of the Johannesburg Roads Agency’s (JRA) “No Join” policy, which comprises a new way to build traffic lights which eliminates the need for an underground cable joining component which has, for years, made traffic lights vulnerable to outages during heavy rain.

“Each join in the cabling of a traffic light is an electrical weakness in the circuit that makes it vulnerable to rain, electrical surges and lightening.

“The No Join policy launched today serves to reduce the high number of electrical faults over time for the most critical, high-volume intersections in the city,” Joburg said in a statement.

This policy’s implementation will cost the city R6 million.

Speaking at the briefing, Mashaba also announced that 640 Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) officers would be designated to work at traffic light intersections in the city’s bid to prevent crime and cable theft, as well as to work with the JRA in the daily maintenance operations.

Mashaba, however, did not want to comment further about the new designations, saying the JMPD would be making an announcement in this regard next week.

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