Metro targets IPTS bus lanes
Structures not needed in scaled-down service will be opened to ease congestion
AFTER billions of rands were poured into building bus lanes for Nelson Mandela Bay’s beleaguered Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS), the municipality now wants to remove some of the infrastructure to ease traffic flow.
This, as the metro plans to implement a scaled-down version of the IPTS and roll out only three routes over the next three years, as opposed to the five routes that were initially planned.
Presenting a progress report of his first 100 days in office, mayor Athol Trollip said the DA-led coalition government had done more than its predecessors by bringing about change to the city.
Since stepping into City Hall more than three months ago, the municipality has hired, fired, halved the salaries of political appointees, saved close to R200-million and drastically improved service delivery, according to Trollip.
Addressing the media at City Hall, he said the metro had secured German funding totalling ß150 000 (R2.2-million) over three years for specialists to assess and advise on how to improve the Bay’s transport systems.
“For example, in Kempston Road, where the road is so congested ... that people can’t really operate and businesses are suffering – how can we best eliminate that congestion?” he said.
“It’s for advice, planning, scientific research – it’s free money that this administration has gone to find so citizens ultimately have a public transport system that will take them where they want to go at an affordable rate.”
The municipality has spent about R2.5-billion on the IPTS system, the bulk of the money pumped into infrastructure for the bus lanes.
Trollip said while there was no budget available to remove the concrete infrastructure of the bus lanes, the lanes that would not be used for the IPTS over the next three years would be opened up.
The metro has targeted April for the launch of the Cleary Park route, which will run from Cleary Park to the central business district and NMMU.
The Njoli Square route will be rolled out in the following financial year and the Uitenhage route the year after.
Trollip used Kempston Road as an example of a heavily congested road that would be opened up for motorists to use by removing the yellow rumble strips.
A large part of Kempston Road was closed for months when the IPTS lanes were constructed, crippling businesses, which complained at the time that they had lost out on revenue.
He said IPTS infrastructure had been rolled out and built for a comprehensive system without the necessary expertise, capacity and even infrastructure.
“Any infrastructure that has been built, that compounds traffic congestion, will ultimately have to be changed or eradicated,” Trollip said.
“Eradication is going to cost us money that we don’t have, but changing it and simply getting rid of those yellow [rumble strips] that prevent a vehicle from crossing into another lane, we will remove those so that we can have free access into those lanes where buses are not going to go.”
Meanwhile, the metro’s political head of roads and transport, Rano Kayser, said the municipality no longer had any arrangement with Laphum ’ilanga – the secondary cooperative that represented the taxi industry to run the IPTS.
He said the municipality was negotiating directly with the 10 associations in the Bay about signing a new memorandum of agreement.
Touching on some of the new administration’s work over the past three months, Trollip said that after a lengthy disciplinary process corporate services boss Mod Ndoyana had been fired.
However, city manager Johann Mettler clarified later that Ndoyana had been found guilty by the disciplinary panel but still had to be sentenced.
Mettler said the director of supply chain management, Ndimphiwe Manty-ontya, had been placed on precautionary suspension pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing.
Mantyontya is in hot water over a number of bungles related to the beleaguered tender department.
Trollip said they had banned firstclass domestic air travel, cancelled dubious contracts with Mohlaleng Media and Afrisec, and improved the response time for fixing reported potholes to a 72-hour turnaround time.
He conceded that the metro could have handled the issue of account defaulters, by blocking their prepaid meters, better.
“Am I happy with the 100 days in office?
“Yes, I am, although I would be happier if we had achieved all the targets we set out,” Trollip said.
IN YET another housing scandal to rock Nelson Mandela Bay, the municipality cannot access a credible housing list of RDP beneficiaries, mayor Athol Trollip said yesterday. This is forcing the municipality back to the drawing board to compile a new list – a blow to the tens of thousands of people who have been waiting for years to get houses.
The last known figure of beneficiaries on the metro’s waiting list was about 80 000. This excludes the list of people whose homes need to be rectified.
Restarting the housing list could cause a major setback in a department that is already saddled with a number of bungles related to RDP projects.
Trollip said the political head of human settlements, Nqaba Bhanga, had been battling for the past three months at the helm to get his hands on the housing beneficiary list.
The new coalition government had promised to make the list public as it had been clouded in secrecy and mired in controversy.
At his report-back session on his first 100 days in office yesterday, Trollip said: “There is not a housing list in this city that is credible or honest.
“That is why we have people who have lived 13 to 20 years waiting for a house, and we have people who arrive over the weekend who move into a house or site, because they buy it.
“We have information that people have been selling their sites and houses – and that can only happen in the absence of a credible and coherent housing list.
“We will draw one up, so that you know that if you are number 1 333, when that house is built, no one will go in there before you,” Trollip said.
He lambasted the Housing Development Agency (HDA), which he accused of overseeing shoddily built projects.
He used the construction bungles in Missionvale and Motherwell as examples, although both projects were overseen by the municipality at the time, before the function was stripped away by the Department of Human Settlements.
About 15 RDP houses in Missionvale were built in a floodplain area and would have to be demolished.
Dozens of duplex homes in Motherwell NU29 which were deemed structurally unsound could face the same fate.
Trollip said the metro wanted Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu to hand back control of overseeing housing projects.
“Housing is a matter of great concern to us, that we do not have the responsibility to build houses as a metro.
“Yes, there were massive issues around fraud and corruption before.
“We’ve spoken to the minister [Sisulu] but [she] says it was a cabinet resolution – which is an indication that the ANC government is not so keen on returning the responsibility to Nelson Mandela Bay as it is not governed by them.
“We are going to take whatever steps necessary so we have the responsibility of building houses [and] a credible list.”
National human settlements spokesman Xolani Xundu said it was because of problems like lists that were not credible that Sisulu had decided to centralise the beneficiary lists of municipalities around the country.
Xundu said the process was under way, Sisulu’s intervention was still in effect and the HDA would continue to be the implementing agent until 2019.