Corlett Avenue and Albertina Sisulu Road traffic lights finally replaced after seven month wait
Officials from provincial department and JRA meet at the intersection on April 26 for an unveiling
Flying blind day and night, a small sense of order has at last been restored.
The fresh tar was laid, the new lines were painted and now the bright yellow poles have returned to the intersection of Albertina Sisulu Road and Corlett Avenue. At the end of the previous week, the poles were cemented in and by Tuesday, April 26, officials from Gauteng Department of Road and Transport (GPDRT) and Johannesburg Roads Agency(JRA) met to unveil the new lights.
The intersection has been an empty mess of confusion since the end of October when the signals worked for the last time. A man was arrested in early November in connection with the alleged theft of the infrastructure but pieces of the poles and cables had slowly been picked off before and after the incident, leaving nothing of value behind. The new traffic signals come at a cost of roughly R300 000, as indicated by JRA.
No dedicated additional security had been arranged for the intersection, leaving them at the mercy of the elements that initially stripped them. The maintenance and overall responsibility of this intersection’s traffic lights, and many other main routes through Roodepoort, have since April 1 been under the jurisdiction of GPDRT. However, JRA is the entity that completed this project as the contractors were already allocated to the job prior to the JRA and GPDRT arrangement ending.
Reasons for the seven-month delay range from budget approval, ordering parts and allocating teams to complete the work.
“The entities were simply not anticipating the vast amount of traffic signal thefts throughout the city,” said Ward 71 councillor René Benjamin. The traffic lights feature a Uninterruptible Power Supply unit, and GPS technology that enables them to communicate information for administrators to track and perform the required maintenance.
The reinstatement of the traffic signals will come as some reprieve, but this is just one of many throughout Roodepoort that remain off or dysfunctional. Traffic too may not return to its previous volumes as the section of Albertina Sisulu Road between the freshly presented intersection and Westgate is dangerously impassable to the average motorist.
Grateful still for the incremental progress, hopes are that the traffic signals keep their shine intact and undisturbed.
