Joburg to spend R250m on roads

The Johannesburg Road Agency announced yesterday that it would upgrade road marking as part of its Transport Month activities.

“Today, the city, through the Johannesburg Road Agency, continued the work of improving the safety of all road users within our communities by upgrading road markings within Region B,” executive mayor Herman Mashaba said in a statement.

Visible road markings are vital for maintaining high levels of safety for the city’s road users, including pedestrians and drivers, he said.

The city will introduce new materials to ensure road markings are more durable to accommodate ever-increasing traffic volumes and to improve night-time visibility.

The road markings upgrade forms “part of a number of events to commemorate Transport Month, which encourages responsible behaviour by all road users across the city”, the statement adds.

“Within the current financial year, the city has set aside R1.2 billion for the Johannesburg Roads Agency within its capital budget,” the statement said.

Of this amount, R250 million has been set aside for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of roads.

Other projects include rehabilitation of bridges to the tune of R181 million and stormwater upgrades, to which R226 million has been allocated.

While it has spent about R335 million a year over the past two years, the city says it will need to invest about R8.1 billion to eradicate the approximately 1 169km of gravel roads, “90% of which are in townships or informal settlements”. – ANA