Don’t ban trucks, do this instead…
IREFER to your front-page story “Ban trucks during N1 peak” in the Cape Argus on Thursday. The problem is not the trucks per se in peak traffic, but rather the reason they are there and the standard of their (and other) motorists’ driving. In the 1970s, I was involved in the design of the container terminal in the Ben Schoeman Basin, opposite Paardeneiland. The idea was that containers would be brought into and out of the harbour on trains and transported to and from Bellville by rail, where they would be received or distributed to their final destinations. Any truck traffic, in and out of the harbour, via the access opposite Paardeneiland Road, would be minimal.
For some unknown reason, the Transnet Port Authority decided to stop the rail-based container operation and has gone to road-based, resulting in long queues of trucks in the harbour and heavy volumes of trucks carrying containers in peakhour traffic on the surrounding road network.
If Transnet reverted to rail-based container traffic the number of trucks during peak time would be drastically reduced.
In 2009/2010, as part of the Koeberg Interchange upgrade design team, I carried out a safety evaluation of the M5-to-N1 traffic ramp, where there have been, to my knowledge, two fatal accidents with containers falling on cars, the most recent of which was this month. The problems on the ramp were due to drivers not complying with the speed limit on the ramp between the M5 and the N1 inbound.
Road design cannot compensate for bad driving. That is a function of the municipal traffic police who are conspicuous in their absence. In my opinion as a civil engineer, reverting to rail and implementing traffic laws are the solutions. Transnet should be forced to rethink its container operation and the city should be ploughing resources into traffic law enforcement.