Skhumbuzo Macozoma, Managing Director of the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA), says he is heading up a very different JRA from the one he inherited in 2012. The company is now busy with traffic light maintenance programme as well as rehabilitation of roads.
“The JRA I inherited was not in good condition. We were financially insolvent, we had lost a lot of skills, we did not have a long term plan,” he said. “The JRA I’m heading now is totally different from the JRA I found back in 2012. Good signs, we’ve got a good budget now [and] we’ve got a clear strategy for the next five years.” The JRA will be running a traffic lights maintenance programme until 2015. talk radio Macozoma spoke about the challenges of maintaining traffic lights on Talk Radio 702. The JRA is currently trying to maintain cables so that they don’t get old like many have now. Vandalism and theft of traffic light equipment by organised units is also a major problem. According to Macozoma, only a quarter of the city’s traffic signals are on the remote management system. This means that when they stop working, the JRA is not immediately aware of it and must rely on people report faults. Macozoma is trying to get 75% of traffic signals on the remote system by 2015.He also says that the JRA has improved its reaction time for repairs from an average of 30 hours last year to 14 hours – well below the industry standard of 24 hours. “The challenge is for the ones that we don’t see.” He says replacing controllers is a mammoth task.
The JRA also has R1 billion to spend on resurfacing roads over next three years. This year’s budget is set at 100 million, 40% of which has already been spent. “46% of our roads are in poor to very poor condition. That’s why you’ve got potholes everywhere,” says Macozoma. The programme for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the part of the network that is in poor condition will run for the next three to four years. “I think generally, City of Johannesburg citizens are going to see much improvement over the next three, four years,” says Macozoma
