Not all crevices are potholes, JRA explains

It’s quite easy to confuse a pothole for a Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) excavation site ahead of JRA installing road features. One such confusion was made when JRA was contacted on January 24 with an enquiry on what was at first sight thought to be a double-lane spanning pothole on River Road in Bryanston.

“This is not a pothole but an excavation on the road due to a service provider,” JRA spokesperson Bertha Peters-Scheepers explained. “The team will revert to you with the definition of a pothole as well as diggings that require reinstatement. We will also check on the system, who was issued a wayleave to dig up the road there, and when the road will be reinstated.”

Peters-Scheepers clarified the confusion by providing non-technical guides to understanding what potholes and wayleaves are.

“Only having worked on the road will someone know the difference,” Peters-Scheepers said, explaining: “Wayleave is a common law property name, used in the United Kingdom. A Wayleave entitles the holder only the right to use such land in a specified manner, and the word is generally used in the case of roads to utility companies for the right to work in the ‘road reserve’ to bury cables or access utility lines.”

Peters-Scheepers provided an outline for how applications for wayleaves work.

“The application for a wayleave is necessary for the JRA to monitor and control all work within the road reserve so that it conforms to the JRA policy and the service delivery agreement,” said Peters-Scheepers. “The value of other services in the road reserve is often more than that of the road itself and therefore requires as much or more maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. These activities, together with the work that has to be carried out on the road itself, result in considerable delays, inconvenience, danger, and additional costs to the road press.”

Work done in the road reserve can have inconvenient consequences leading to serious cost implications, such as:

• Damage to roads and other Services.
• Damage to vehicles.
•  Injury to vehicle occupants or pedestrians.
•  reduction of the effective life of the road, footway, or other services time and social costs caused by delays.

“There is, therefore, a need to ensure careful control and coordination of all work in the road reserve. This is the duty of the road authority who is the custodian of all municipal road reserves.”

Peters-Scheepers, furthermore, shared a guide towards differentiating potholes from wayleaves and other JRA excavations. The guide, published by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) provides a summary of the main triggers to potholes in a way that people who aren’t road infrastructure engineers. CSIR’s smart mobility executive cluster manager Kenny Kistan writes:

“Over the past few years, the development of potholes in South African roads has accelerated considerably, leading to serious concern.”

The creation of potholes is determined by the following factors:

• The presence of excessive water is a primary cause.
• The load of traffic on roads can cause potholes
•  Deterioration of road pavement structures can trigger potholes
•  The quality of materials used on roads also determines the formation of potholes.
• Occasionally, non-structural factors such as road spillages of diesel or other chemicals, animal hooves on the road in hot weather, accidents, and poor road design.
• Ageing of bitumen – the material used to bond crushed stone and other particles when road-laying.

Preventative measures for potholes:

• Ensure that bituminous seals are resealed timeously.
• Sealing of open cracks which allow water to enter.
• Phasing in preventative maintenance practices.
• Initiating well-controlled measures for pavement maintenance.
• Rejuvenate dry bitumen with diluted bitumen emulsion spray timeously.

Related Article: Wayleave in Bryanston to be attended by JRA