The recent rains resulted in massive flooding in Lonehill and Fourways, with multiple cars stranded in massive pools of water on William Nicol Drive, Witkoppen Road and Main Road.
Despite these roads being main provincial roads that carry tens of thousands of cars a day, they have been built without storm water drains, so the water has nowhere to go.
If this doesn’t make the roads dangerous enough for drivers, large stretches of these main arterial routes don’t have pavements allowing taxis to use the verges as additional driving lanes.
Not only does this constitute a danger to pedestrians, but it results in the edges of the asphalt crumbling because of the volume of traffic driving on and off the verges.
Failure to provide storm water drains and pavements contributes to the rapid deterioration of the roads, and higher maintenance and repair costs.
The failure to install storm water drains and construct pavements is not due to lack of money, because Gauteng Provincial Government only spent 96 percent of their
infrastructure budget in 2013. So this is either gross incompetence or punishment because residents in the area elected Democratic Alliance councillors.
Whatever the reason, it is totally unacceptable that the largest commercial trading area outside of Sandton, which pays millions in rates and taxes, comes to a grinding halt
whenever it rains because of the authorities failure to provide the necessary infrastructure.
