Residents fume over patchwork pothole fixing

Potholes are starting to become the norm to some residents in the Roodepoort area. Many community members have approached the Northsider in the hopes of raising awareness about the lack of road maintenance.

Just recently, the Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) and the City of Joburg (CoJ), in partnership with Dialddirect insurance and Discovery Insure introduced a new way to report, and hopefully reduce, the potholes in Johannesburg. The Pothole Patrol initiative makes use of a mobile application that helps residents report a pothole via submitting a picture of it, or a location of where the pothole is. While this is a great initiative, residents are wondering what it will take to get the potholes fixed.

The Pothole Patrol can assist with potholes that meet certain criteria, namely it needs to measure no more than a metre by a metre with a depth of 100mm or less. Anything deeper than that needs to be handed over to the JRA to repair. Unfortunately, this means that many of the potholes being reported are outside of the Pothole Patrol’s jurisdiction.

One of the roads in need of rehabilitation, Saayman Road near Honeydew Manor, has numerous potholes on both sides of the road. This goes to the extent that if drivers try to avoid one pothole they risk hitting another one. To make matters worse, in between the potholes are patches of tar indicating that the road had been fixed before. These fixes might be an affordable short-term solution, but what is the JRA planning for the long term?
Local resident, Tiaan Scholtz submitted various service requests to the JRA to no avail.

Also read: The dreaded pothole – it is everywhere?

“The potholes are still there and growing by the day … in size and numbers,” said Scholtz. “The entire Florin Road has many potholes, from the Retail Crossing Shopping Centre up to Sikkel Street. This is where the largest pothole is.”

Ward 97 councillor Jacques Hoon explained that the pothole problem goes deeper than the surface. He added that to improve the roads and prevent new potholes from forming, the municipality has to look at the groundwater levels and adequate storm-water draining systems. With the ground water seeping underneath the tar, it is inevitable that new potholes will form. This means that the best course of action should be to find a way to provide adequate draining for the road while repairing the potholes, which will reduce the maintenance on the road in the long term.

The Northsider has requested comment from the JRA, but at the time of publication no response has been received.