While this project is long overdue and much anticipated, one needs to be realistic regarding what the project will deliver to the road-user.
The stretch of road has ‘failed’ in two ways. The first failure is that of the pavement layers (engineered road layers), as is evident from the potholes and the deep rutting in the vehicle tracks along the uphill slow lanes.
Far more importantly. for the road-user. is that the road has reached its designed vehicle-carrying capacity some years ago. This capacity failure can only be rectified by increasing the number of lanes to two lanes in each direction.
Sadly, the project does not include this in the scope of work (as I am told by the consultant’s representative), hence the speed of movement will increase slightly, but insignificantly.
Bottlenecks that are already present along this portion of the M4 are not being addressed to my knowledge. These bottlenecks include the surfaced shoulders being too narrow, particularly over the Umdloti River Bridge and the lane-dropping areas, where two lanes merge into one, not being dealt with.
Rehabilitation of pavement and surface layers will not address these problems. In fact, the rehabilitated road could well see more accidents because people tend to speed more on roads that are in good condition.
Traffic numbers will continue to increase, hence the average speed of travelling will go down. The powers-that-be must convince the DOT to provide a proper dual-carriageway for this stretch of road. Anything less, while welcome, will not resolve the traffic jams that occur daily.
Nic North-Coombes
Mt Moreland
