The wettest winter in over 30 years has presented Capetonians with more than the usual pesky potholes this year, some as big as small fishponds. But according to the City, motorists will have to wait for the rainy season to pass for permanent repairs to be done.
Having to carefully navigate some local roads, residents are concerned about road safety in general, and damage to their cars.
In one such road, Stanley Street in Bracken Heights, a minefield of potholes await you on a stretch of the road that has become almost unusable.
One resident who lives in this road, but does not want his name mentioned in the newspaper, says he can barely get in and out of his driveway due to the severety of the potholes this year.
“If you don’t know about the potholes you will drive right onto it and this could be dangerous. Motorists are forced to drive on the other side of the road to avoid it and at night its even harder to see where you drive,” he says.
A few kilometres from there in Frans Conradie Road between Brackenfelll and Scottsville you will find a few more big craters.
Resident Gavin Riddles says his car’s rims and magwheel was damaged driving there about a month ago.
“These big potholes in a main road is quite worrisome and have still not been fixed. There are many more in Kraaifontein,” he told TygerBurger last week.
Both residents say they reported the potholes to local authorities.
Repair work
The City’s Mayco member for urban mobility, Rob Quintas, says the potholes that are reported to the City are addressed on an ongoing basis by the urban mobility directorate’s road infrastructure management department.
“The repairs are timed in accordance with the available resources, in a systematic way, taking into consideration the weather outlook as repair work cannot be undertaken when the road surface is wet,” he said in response to a media inquiry.
“The team addresses potholes on a daily basis utilising internal depot resources to do temporary repairs to safeguard the area. Thereafter the City uses contractors to do the permanent repairs. The intention of temporary repairs is to improve the road safety as best we can while we were experiencing a very wet winter. Unfortunately, contractors can only start with permanent repairs after the rainy season, as this type of repairs require dry conditions for prolonged periods.”
Quintas says the term tender contractor for the district is currently operating in the Bellville area, and once done will move into Brackenfell, Kraaifontein and the Durbanville areas.
“We are committed to repairing potholes as soon as is practically possible, pending bad weather; and encourage the public to please keep on reporting potholes to our Urban Mobility Information Centre on 0800 65 64 63.”
