A traffic study of the town of Ermelo was conducted by us. After monitoring the intake of cars which link to Ermelo through three major national routes – the N2, N11 and N17, a ring road was proposed to ease congestion and assist in traffic flow.

A ring road is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town or city. It comprises a subset of freeways that circle the City of Johannesburg, South Africa and the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area. The ring road’s purpose is to allow traffic to bypass the city along fast-speed highways and is also used by local residents to commute between work and home.

For such properties to exist, we needed to introduce a new technology into finding a solution for the problem. They made use of an aerial survey to examine the constant traffic status for Ermelo. Once the problem was identified, we sent engineers out to plan a solution.

In order to find a solution, we needed to see what the cause of traffic was. We noticed that Ermelo is located along three major national routes – the N2, N11 and N17. All three roads are busy with freight packages such as timber, agricultural produce and coal. The more vehicles that pass through the town of Ermelo, the more traffic builds up. Therefore, traffic flow does not meet its requirements and road safety is exposed.

For engineers to start building, a great amount of planning is done to get the best result. An environmental impact report is done on the roads that will be altered to build a ring road. The road improvement plans consider what construction will do to impact biodiversity, socio-economic and heritage resources.

Once we proposed a ring road around the town of Ermelo in the Mpumalanga province, a report evaluated any environmental fatal flaws related to the ring road. The range of socio-economic impacts?that could occur were acknowledged and the engineers began with their plans.

There are currently plans in place by engineers and assessment practitioners to improve the N2 connecting East London and Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. The N2 passes through the congested central business districts of Butterworth and Dutywa, causing delays for travellers, so the goal is to change the direction and pace of traffic flow. Just like we have done with the ring road in Ermelo, there are plans in place to secure traffic flow on the N2.