Mayor Mashaba unveils a 24-hour traffic hotline

24 March 2017

 

Johannesburg Executive Mayor Cllr Herman Mashaba on Thursday, March 23, launched a 24-hour hotline to help ease traffic congestion in South Africa’s major economic hub.

 

The traffic hotline number is 080 872 3342.

The announcement of the new traffic hotline comes a week after Mayor Mashaba unveiled innovative plans to fix broken traffic lights in some of the city’s major intersections to alleviate traffic congestion during signal downtime. The move is also in response to the need to grow Johannesburg’s economy by at least 5% by 2021 articulated in the new administration’s 10-point plan.

Unveiling the hotline at the Johannesburg Metro Police Department headquarters in Martindale, the Mayor said it was important that the City of Johannesburg dealt effectively with traffic congestion as it ultimately had a negative impact on the city’s productivity and economic activity. He said many productive hours were lost when motorists simply trying to get from one point to another got stuck in traffic for hours.

“Businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, have singled out our poor traffic system as one of the City’s top challenges inhibiting growth opportunities and business confidence,” said Mayor Mashaba.

He said it was important that traffic congestion was effectively attended to and improved as this would help improve economic growth.

Member of the Mayor Committee for Public Safety Cllr Michael Sun said Johannesburg was ranked 44th among the most-congested cities in the world. He said such congestion was costing the City millions of rands due to lost productivity.

The traffic hotline, Mayor Mashaba said, would enable motorists to have their traffic-related complaints swiftly attended to by dedicated operators supported by a specialised and highly responsive task team of 640 JMPD officers. Mayor Mashaba said the City would also recruit 1 500 additional JMPD officers, made possible by a R31-million allocation in the City’s recent budget adjustment. He said their presence would help ease traffic flow.

“Our transport network suffers from years of neglect at the hands of previous administrations. This long-term neglect can be seen in the City’s 10-year critical infrastructure backlog. Completely reversing our longstanding and complex challenges, with respect to the transport network, will take time and the public’s patience,” said Mayor Mashaba.

Last week, the City launched a “No-Join” Policy aimed at combating challenges associated with traffic signal downtime at key traffic intersections.

Mashaba said the City would no longer join old cables when an electrical fault is reported at a downed traffic light but replace the damaged cable with a new one.

Some of the investments that have been made following the 2016-2017 budget adjustment include the following:

• R6-million to replace cabling in key traffic intersections through the “No-Join” Policy;

• R15-million for emergency storm water interventions;

• R9.2-million for new storm water management projects; and

• R60-million for the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) to procure the requisite material for pothole repairs.

“The City has also increased traffic light security systems in our fight against vandalism and theft,” said Mayor Mashaba.

Mayor Mashaba said his administration was also investing in mobile generators to temporarily supply power to intersections affected by power supply outages. “This will alleviate interruptions to traffic signals, which contribute 28% to daily traffic signal outages.”