Cape Town's roads.

Who plans the maintenance of our roads?

Whoever this person is he needs to go to school some time to learn something about planning.

I took a drive out to Worcester this week and instead of using the Huguenot Tunnel ( which has a toll of R18.00 now for cars to use it ) I decided to drive over the du Toit's Kloof Pass.

About three kilometres into the pass I came across the first Stop/Go sign board where I was required to stop and wait for at least 15 minutes while traffic coming down the pass utilised the one lane of road that was open to traffic.

What was more than amazing was that nowhere was there any signposting to tell one that the road was reduced to one way traffic for most of the length of the pass.

I was stopped four times with a total delay of about 45 minutes to drive the few kilometres over the pass.

Luckily, I had no time restrictions so I enjoyed the views that I was not likely to have seen had I not had to stop.

On my return trip to Cape Town I had planned to drive from Worcester to Villiersdorp on the road that runs along the eastern side of the Hottentots Holland mountain range.

Lo and Behold ! we were stopped again as they were resurfacing this road as well .

No where were there any prior warnings of roadworks.

Once through all the enforced stops we arrived in Villiersdorp believing that it was not possible to find more roadworks.

Boy, was I wrong?

On the Franschhoek pass road we once again encountered a stop/ go delay.

It was quite amazing that two of the subsidiary roads out of Cape Town over the mountains were blocked by roadworks and that a connecting road on the Worcester side of the mountain was also blocked.

Not only are there road works in the mountains but the N1 highway into Cape Town is undergoing a resurfacing as well.

We are glad that the maintenance is taking place but would love to know who plans the traffic controls.

Both sides of the highway are blocked at the same time and road signs are so badly set up that long delays are caused where there should be none.

Finding your way through the maze of misleading traffic signs is quite a nightmare.

It appears that the contractors who are repairing the roads are left to control the traffic as well.

What do they know about traffic control?

Seeing the chaos made me wonder where are our trained traffic officers were.

Sitting in their cars somewhere using speed cameras to trap people I suppose.

Maybe if they sorted out some of the signage we might not have so many accidents on our roads.

Come on traffic authorities!

Get your act together!

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To find out where I went on my round trip to Worcester read Turtle Essays latest ezine.
Here is the link:

Turtle Essays edition no 126

See you soon.

Geoff Fairman

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