Peter Smulik, Rugby
I sympathise 100% with RD Winfield on “Too many traffic lights”, etc (Echo letters, August 25).
His description of the circumstances is a reflection of what happens around Cape Town, despite our so-called “good administration”.
In particular, the departments for road infrastructure, transport and traffic control are incapable, under qualified at best, to deal with the future needs of a mega city.
The mayoral committee member for transport, Brett Heron, should rather stick to what he studied, ie law and maybe social development. With him and other such wrongly and (un-)qualified persons in similarly responsible positions it is no wonder that we experience the daily mess on our roads.
While there are hundreds of minor, patch-work road works all over the city expanse, causing more nuisance than good, nothing of any substance is done to improve the situation, nor seem to be there any plans of a long-term nature.
I challenge the City planners to publish 20 and 50 year plans showing us what the road infrastructure should look like then.
But if we continue the way we have in the last 15 years, lots of people will just have to leave their cars standing in a traffic jam and begin walking to their respective destinations.
While Winfield’s concern lies primarily “in the south”, the “middle axis” around Paarden Eiland, Maitland, Woodstock and surrounding suburbs are bursting with new “developments”, while getting choked by more and more traffic, not to mention the inherent problem of the dozens of container depots and their hundreds of trucks driving to and fro, like ants around ant hills.
To speak of what is happening in the City centre, one can only put one word to it: disaster. Any City planner worth his money and with some far sighted vision would have a field day, even years, restructuring this maze causing the daily traffic chaos.
Heaven help us!
