Further delays expected at John Ross highway roadwork site

MOTORISTS can expect a further two-week delay in the completion of roadworks at the Medway intersection on the John Ross.

This is according to City of uMhlathuze cllr Christo Botha, who says the delay lies with the back-filling and re-tarring of the section of road in question.

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For at least four weeks, the left lane at the intersection on the Meerensee-bound carriageway has been closed, causing heavy backlogs of traffic during rush-hour.

Impatient motorists have been using the right-only lane to go straight, or force their way into the open lane at the construction site.

Wednesday afternoon saw a three-vehicle pile-up in the vicinity, further impacting the traffic build-up which extended to the Arboretum intersection.

The cause of the dug-up road is an ongoing problem, with the main water pipe that forks at the site and one section feeding Meerensee, with the other feeding the Small Craft Harbour.

The pipe, which runs underneath the road, has on numerous occasions, leaked at the fork, necessitating the digging up of this section of road several times in recent years.

The municipality is confident that this problem has now been resolved permanently, but the back-filling and re-tarring of the road is the work of another municipal department and has to be done before the traffic lights can be reconnected.

“If the necessary work is done to get the robots back up and running before the back-filling and re-tarring are done. It leaves the site vulnerable to cable theft, which is a huge and ongoing problem,” said Botha.

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