The service delivery campaign, which started in November 2020, has made great strides in clearing the backlog created by the COVID-19 national lockdown regulation restrictions. Cape Town Mayor, Alderman Dan Plato, joined the City of Cape Town’s roads staff to inspect road repairs in Bellville and Ravensmead, along with the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Transport, Alderman Felicity Purchase.
‘I am pleased that during the last months of 2020 our road repair teams were working overtime to fix the potholes that had developed during the lockdown. Late last year, the impact of the rainy season and the national lockdown, which prevented our teams from working, showed a noticeable impact on the reach of repair and maintenance work. Between 1 June 2020 and 14 January 2021, more than 16 000 potholes have been repaired, which is a demonstration and commitment of increasing capacity to fix reported potholes.
‘The City intensified service delivery efforts through a targeted approach which includes the continuing use of external service providers to expand our service reach, in partnership with the joint efforts of our own roads teams. Because of the scope of the problem I personally joined City staff to thank them for their hard work and to ensure that residents can see our commitment to maintaining the level of service that they have come to expect from the City,’ said Mayor Plato.
In early November 2020, Mayor Plato launched the pothole repair campaign and personally visited City staff on duty and joined efforts to provide services to the residents of Cape Town.
City-wide, the City’s Roads Department have repaired:
- 2 776 potholes during the five-month period January 2020 until the end of May 2020
- 16 484 potholes between 1 June 2020 to 14 January 2021, including 2 829 during December 2020 and the first half of January 2021
‘The numbers reflect the tremendous effort that the Transport Directorate is making to eradicate the backlog of pothole repairs. Cape Town’s vast road network is one of our biggest assets and must be maintained to ensure economic activity and the movement of people and goods. I also want to mention that all-in-all the City’s road network covers a distance of over 10 000 km, which gives one an idea of the job at hand. I want to thank the road repair teams for their hard work and dedication over the past few months, and want to encourage them to keep on going,’ said Alderman Purchase.
Overloading remains a huge challenge. This often causes deformation on the road in the form of rutting along the wheel paths and the dams in these ruts. These lead to the demise of the road, besides being dangerous to the road user depending on the circumstances, especially in wet weather.
‘People seldom make the connection between abusive practices and the deterioration of our road infrastructure. We have a road maintenance plan and we are doing all we can to eradicate the backlogs, however, we need our residents and road users to also work with us,’ said Alderman Purchase.