The City of Cape Town is preparing to take over the maintenance and management of key traffic lights currently controlled by SANRAL.
The City’s Urban Mobility Directorate plans to enter into a three-year agreement with SANRAL Western Cape.
The deal still needs final approval from City Council later this month, but the Mayoral Committee has already backed the proposal.
If approved, the City will manage 32 signalised intersections on national roads within Cape Town.
These intersections are located along sections of national roads that are owned and managed by SANRAL, namely:
- The R300 between the N2 and the N1 highways
- The N2 highway between the R300 and the R102
- The N1 highway from the R300 towards the east
Inter-governmental cooperation
While the City will handle day-to-day maintenance and fault responses, SANRAL will continue to carry the costs. This includes construction, operation, and long-term upkeep of the traffic signals.
Cape Town already manages about 1 560 signalised intersections on its own road network, and officials say the City has the technical capacity to take on more.
“The City has four traffic signal maintenance depots across Cape Town that are responsible for the signals that fall within their areas,” said Rob Quintas, the City’s Mayco member for Urban Mobility.
“We also have dedicated staff who are experts in traffic signal efficiencies and are responsible for sequencing, alignment, and timing to ensure the traffic flow along major transport networks are optimised.”
Learning from Joburg’s traffic light crisis
Quintas emphasised the agreement with SANRAL would benefit road users by allowing the City to respond quicker to faults and carry out upgrades that improve efficiency.
In the process, the City hopes to avoid the kind of traffic light collapse seen in Johannesburg, where ageing infrastructure, vandalism and frequent outages have crippled the network.
The proposed deal in Cape Town will set out the respective responsibilities for labour, materials, upgrades, and new installations over a 36-month period.
SANRAL’s signals are part of the area traffic control network, and are monitored from the Transport Management Centre.
“The City is working closely with SANRAL who is also operating and maintaing the Freeway Management System on behalf of the three road authorities responsible for the freeways in Cape Town, namely the City, the Western Cape Government, and SANRAL,” the City added.
