Gauteng

City repairs over 3 000 potholes in the month of February

Issued by Herman Mashaba – Mayor of Johannesburg
08 Mar 2019 in News

Rainy season in Johannesburg is beginning to wind up, however the heavy rainfall we’ve experienced has wreaked havoc on our roads. Usually, cracks are formed because of the regular – and notorious traffic in our city – which means that, when the rainy summer months come around, rainwater seeps into the asphalt and the underlying layer and causes the cracks to widen, which causes further damage.

Consequently, the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA), which is the custodian of the road network in the City of Joburg, typically receives higher numbers of reports of potholes from residents around this time of year. This has been the case again since the turn of the New Year.

The preservation of the existing road infrastructure is very important to the City of Joburg. It allows for improved movement of traffic and pedestrians flow, and of course, reduces the risk of all vehicles being damaged by potholes and other road defects. In the month of February, the JRA repaired a total of 3045 potholes across the City; with Region A being the best in terms of completion rate (92%).

It is our responsibility to maintain public infrastructure. We are well aware of the formidable work that lies ahead of us. We also know we have to carry out the repairs and maintenance of roads at a quicker rate – for this reason, the JRA has been testing the Jetpatcher road rehabilitation solution system.

The Jetpatcher system is not there to replace the current workforce, but to assist the JRA to accelerate the patching of potholes and the current workload, as well as upskill the existing workforce on the use of new technology.

In the moth of February, the system was used to repaired 2 700 potholes i.e. big patches and potholes (of 1 square meter and potholes of less 0.5 square meters) – averaging just under 200 potholes per day. The testing took place in Region C, with Regions E and A to follow to complete the testing.

This is further proof of how this administration has gradually set about using existing and new techniques to help ease the mammoth service delivery backlogs it inherited within the City of Joburg. These are the product of years and years of neglect and they manifest in the daily service delivery issues that plague our communities.

Due to massive infrastructure backlogs, over 3 900kms of our roads had fallen into the classification of “poor” or “very poor” conditions. In addition to that, work continues in undoing the mammoth backlog in storm water drainage, which further exacerbates the state of our roads.

Indeed, most of the city’s roads have gone past their design lifespan, normally set at about 30 years, with factors such as traffic (loading), drainage system, floods etc., also contributing to the state of our deteriorating road network.

The JRA was allocated R1.2 billion to the capital budget. Within this budget was an allocation of R250 million for road rehabilitation and reconstruction. In addition to this, the entity also budgeted R181 million for the rehabilitation of bridges in 2018/19, up from R49 million in 2017/18. During the recent adjustment budget, an additional R135 million was made available for road rehabilitation.

All of these projects will take time to deliver. As Johannesburg is a large area, aside from the daily inspections and maintenance, I urge residents to be our eyes and ears by reporting issues that they notice to the JRA.

The JRA offers multiple channels that residents can use to log a road infrastructure related fault in the City of Joburg:

  • You can log a fault online via the website www.jra.org.za or via the Find&Fix app. Simply snap a picture of an issue on your mobile phone, choose the nature of the issue on the app, and use GPS to send through your location.
  • You can also call our customer contact centre on 0860 562 874, or report the issue on Twitter, Facebook or e-mail hotline@jra.org.za