Traffic safety drives N2 Adams Road upgrade
We have to think of the safety aspect and that is why it is being upgraded.
“This project is not to do with tolling.”
That’s the defensive line taken by South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) representatives when fielding hostile queries from the Toti public at an open day at Lords and Legends on Thursday, 28 October.
The open day sought to clarify and give residents an opportunity to lodge objections to the proposed Adams Road interchange project.
“While the N2 Wild Coast toll road is one of the 18 strategic integrated projects (SIPs) overseen by the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Committee (PICC), the KZN part of the project has been put on hold until the funding for this section has been resolved by the PICC,” said SANRAL.
“Once the funding is sourced for this portion of the N2, construction will commence. At this stage both interchanges are only going ahead as far as completing the detailed design and obtaining the necessary environmental authorisations.”
To accommodate increased traffic in the south, SANRAL proposes to demolish the existing Adams Road bridge and build a pedestrian bridge a few metres to the north with barrier walls along all on and offramps, disallowing pedestrian access to the actual N2 road surface.
Read about the proposed upgrade here
A new six lane bridge will be built to link Lewis Drive to Grants Road, which joins Kingsway and Beach Road. The Grants Road bridge will be about 200m north from the current Adams Road bridge and will include sidewalks over the N2, which will be widened to accommodate four lanes of traffic in each direction.
The current on and offramps to Adams Road and Lewis Drive will be moved 200m north towards the current Bernadotte and Lewis triangular intersection, to a new interchange that will also allow traffic flow back to Adams Road and Isundu Drive.
The on and offramp into the old CBD will disappear with Commercial Road being closed off at the end of the parking area behind Kingsway Mall. Longer onramps will be created into the southern and northern carriageways.
“Construction is depended on funding,” said Thabiso Dladla, a junior engineer with SANRAL. “This project is to deal with the capacity of traffic in the region. We have to think of the safety aspect and that is why it is being upgraded.”
However, Upper South Coast Anti-Toll Alliance chairman, Ted Holden believes SANRAL is pulling the wool over local residents’ eyes.
“This is just further manipulation by SANRAL that have dumped the N2 Wild Coast toll road into the PICC’s supposedly strategic integrated projects.
SANRAL has been trying to get this toll road going for close on 20 years and infamously topped the record for the longest running EIA ever, having had it kicked into touch once and it should have happened again.
There is only one reason SANRAL is bulldozing these interchanges and that is to simplify their toll collecting points here on the Upper South Coast.
The Moss Kolnik interchange has made it simpler already. Now along with these interchanges, the southbound onramp at Dickens Road will only be completed once they get the interchange at Adams Road.
These changes are to favour SANRAL and their tolling and whomever will make money from it and no-one else on the Upper South Coast, least of all Amanzimtoti.”
Understandably residents whose property will be affected by the construction of the interchange are concerned.
Dianne Meredith, who lives on Raleigh Road which runs parallel to Lewis Drive and Bernadotte Street, complained that not only will they have to live with years of construction pains, their suburb will suffer increased traffic for motorists avoiding the construction area.
“After completion I predict traffic to be higher than it is now,” she said. “Other residential roads will take a knock as the Adams Road bridge will be demolished.
Traffic noise from a raised bridge will increase. Now we plant to deaden freeway noise. A longer, wider and higher overpass means we will have no hope of dulling the noise.
There is a lot of wildlife in the Red Sands area – two years of construction will take its toll on it.
Read a Letter to the Editor here
Basically, the proposed overpass is overkill on a grand scale. I’m sure SANRAL has access to a bunch of clever engineers who can come up with a better, less wasteful and less intrusive plan.
Friends without a car say pedestrian-only bridges are notorious for muggings – it’s not something I had considered, but it would affect many people,” said Dianne.
What others say about Adams Road upgrade
Kim McCarthy – Sapphire Coast Tourism chairman
The proposed Adams Road interchange comes with mixed emotions. Our tourist population doubles between 16 December and 12 January, with the Easter weekend a close second, which is a phenomena that happens throughout the world during summer season.
Whether these few weeks a year warrant an interchange from a tourism perspective is questionable.
We do agree that the current on and offramps are a nightmare to negotiate and we witness accidents on a weekly basis, some of which have proved fatal.
Traffic congestion at the moment is also extremely trying without adequate robots or pointsmen at hand.
The dig out port is definitely going to happen, with an impact of up to 60,000 employees eventually infiltrating Durban South. Our current infrastructure will never handle that amount of traffic.
Having spoken to the engineers, it appears that Kingsway will widen to a double lane from Inyoni Rocks Drive to Link Road, which may require having to buy out a number of business premises to facilitate the project.
Further, high traffic volumes will be drawn to the doorstep of a number of residences along the Berea.
The reality is Toti is being absorbed into the juggernaut that our progressive city has become, but we hope we don’t suffer the consequence of an e-toll.
Laura Taylor – Toti Conservancy chairman
SANRAL says the project will take about five years.
We at Toti Conservancy are not against the upgrading of a road, but we believe ‘due process’ must be followed.
A formal process for raising issues of concern is underway and interested and affected parties have until Monday, 9 November to submit their comment and raise their concerns.
Toti Conservancy is in the process of compiling and submitting the requisite documentation to raise a number of concerns about the project. We encourage all citizens of Amanzimtoti to do the same.
A key component of public participation is the evaluation of the motivation for the given project and secondly an evaluation of ‘alternatives’ that are being considered and the weighing of impacts of the different solutions.
Public comment on the motivation for a given project is crucial, as it ensures that a project meets the real needs and aspirations of the recipients of the infrastructure and not the perceived desires of the affected community.
This aspect is central to the philosophy of democracy.
You cannot develop infrastructure in the interest of the public and then not consider what they deem to be necessary or desirable.
This proposed upgrade has been badly presented to the affected parties because the ‘motivation’ for the project is completely lacking and integration with any of the other infrastructure development tools has not been shown. The result is poor participation and consultation filled with suspicion.
We encourage people to respond to the consultants and raise concern, so that we can ensure the right option be applied.
We already have one half-completed onramp at Dickens Road and the new interchange being presented does not seem to have followed an integrated planning approach as there is no collaboration with the eThekweni planning department.
Integration with the original N2 design is also lacking. The background information document refers to ‘the current proposed layout and footprint differs substantially from the approved EIA process’ but no mention is made of what this approval was or what designs were considered in that approval.
The project site includes a sensitive ‘red sands’ area that is not even mentioned in the BID.
Toti Conservancy advocates for a procedurally correct process that honours our democratic approach to development process and the conservancy objects to the lack of information and consideration of alternatives.
Public comment can only be effective if all the facts are presented and we call on the public to participate and request that a thorough review of the process be conducted and that consideration of all the facts be facilitated through providing all the information necessary.
Ward 97 councillor – Andre Beetge
While expecting a detailed presentation as opposed to an interactive session with engineers and other stakeholders surrounding the proposed upgrade, the open day succeeded in extracting an array of opinions.
During the two hours spent listening to questions, answers and often proposed new ‘solutions’ by members of the public, it became clear that the larger portion of objections were rather emotional – as opposed to others that questioned or sought clarity on the environmental impact, diversion of storm and wastewater, safer traffic dispersal or traffic management during construction.
Following the initial processes, SANRAL will still need to engage eThekwini Municipality on a memorandum of understanding, given that the project will involve several changes and municipal-funded upgrades to local road infrastructure to ensure its eventual success.
Several residents expressed concern with possibly increased traffic flow along Lewis, Peacehaven, Raleigh and Bernadotte roads, coupled with decreasing property value as a result.
While the proposal does lend itself to limited choices, it is impossible to predict exactly which route every individual would choose as entry and exit points with regards to the N2. However, as the current Fynn Road, which becomes Adams Road, carries all the traffic and given that it remains the route with the least turns, it would likely continue to be the preferred route.
Early morning and afternoon school-related traffic along Bernadotte Road will, however be able to disperse much quicker, given that the bottleneck with the current N2 on and offramp will no longer exist.
Where it concerns property value, enquiries confirm that the current traffic flow along arterial routes such as Kingsway into Prospecton, Heather into Hudd, Fynn into Umdoni, Fynn into Adams and Seadoone into School does not have an adverse negative effect on property value.
In my personal experience and from discussions with a number of residents, the proposed upgrade is viewed as a welcome necessity, not only for safety but to bring us in line with other offramps both north and south of Amanzimtoti.
