Two Bits – 7 November 2014

If you’ve managed to avoid Ballito over the past fortnight, then lucky you.
After something like five years the N2 interchange was finished a month ago, yay, hip hooray, but if the traffic had irritated you up to then it was a mere shadow of what was to come. The gridlock has been a nightmare. West St in rush hour at least flows.
Traffic between the new Virgin gym, past the Lifestyle Centre, around what’s left of the M4 traffic circle and down to the Alberlito hospital robots has been cut to a single lane. Take the normal heavy traffic, throw in a couple of dozen heavies avoiding the toll and then on top of that, add half a dozen points where taxis stop with impunity – in the middle of intersections, you won’t believe your eyes – and the result is utter frustration.
After it took me 45 minutes to get from the highway to Alberlito, I was forced to write last week’s headline “Going nowhere slowly”.
Our social media sites have been teeming with complaints from residents. A few have pointed out the benefits we will enjoy once the roadworks are complete, but it’s like saying how much you’ll enjoy life once your broken legs have healed.
In five weeks the tourist avalanche happens. Traffic increases sixfold. Maybe ten. I don’t know, but guaranteed if things stay as they are, the gridlock will go back to Tongaat. If you remember how irritated visitors were when the town ran out of water a couple of years back, it would have nothing on two hours a day spent in a traffic jam. There would be serious consequences for Ballito as a destination now and in future years.
Well done to Louis Luyt from the ratepayers’ association, and Cllr Sandeep Oudhram, chair of the technical services committee, who managed to cobble together a meeting between the contractors and traffic police at short notice on Monday to discuss the crisis.
Long story short, you can read it elsewhere in this issue, everyone’s going to try to work together to have two lanes both ways, plus pointsmen, to keep the cars moving. Maybe they’ll work through the night to build the road, but don’t hold your breath. Pity this meeting didn’t happen two months ago, but then we like to do everything at the last minute, don’t we?
Like the sign at the library: “Don’t hurry us – we’re locals. The hurrieder we go, the behinder we get!”
Right at the end of the meeting, when everyone’s packing up, Ward 6 councillor Colin Marsh wakes up and says: “I don’t think the media should paint this in a negative light. It will be bad for our town if they say that Ballito is in crisis. Try to put a happy face on it.”
Oh yes, Cllr Marsh, that was a useful comment. Personally I think headlines like “Going nowhere slowly” are far more effective in lighting fires under backsides than “Think happy thoughts while you’re idling” but hey, what do I know. (And what is he smoking!)
Perhaps Cllr Marsh would like to try my new version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. In fact, he can sing it at the M4 intersection at rush hour:
On the 12th day of Christmas
My true love sent to me . . .
12 tourists twitching
11 cars a-stalling
10 taxis stopping
9 ratepayers ranting
8 shopkeepers shouting
7 robots broken
6 labourers leaning
5 heavies jack-knifed
4 beaches empty
3 negative newspapers
2 councillors snoozing
And one bloody great happy traffic jam!
* * *
A priest was talking to a group of kids about “being good” and going to heaven. At the end   he asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Heaven! Heaven!” yelled Little Lisa.
“And what do you have to be to get there?” asked the priest.
“Dead!” yelled Little Johnny.