ROAD SAFETY

Investing
in safety

SANRAL is constructing a 20km pedestrian walkway along the N2, from Mzeke to Mount Frere, in the Eastern Cape. The pedestrian walkway will be 1.8m wide along that stretch of national road.

Not only is this project creating work for 234 people, it demonstrates SANRAL’s commitment to pedestrian safety as a top priority.

According to the Department of Transport, between 1 December 2015 and 11 January 2016, the Eastern Cape had the secondhighest number of pedestrian deaths in South Africa. The death toll for the 2015/16 financial year was 278 in the Eastern Cape, with KwaZulu- Natal at 302. That’s too many. We at SANRAL are 100% committed to reducing those numbers with highquality engineering and a humancentred (‘safe systems’) approach to building infrastructure.

This pedestrian walkway project is valued at approximately R35m and is expected to take about 18 months to complete. The construction of the walkways started last October (2016) from the Mhlontlo and Umzimvubu local municipalities.

SANRAL’s Southern Region Manager, Mbulelo Peterson, said: “This project has changed the lives of the community in many ways – providing skills development, employment opportunities, local SMME business development and local economic growth, along with training people to work on other projects.”

The programme is being implemented along the N2 section

19, between Qumbu and Mount Frere. The majority of the walkway is being built at the entrances to the towns and other villages with high pedestrian traffic. And in this case, improved safety also means more skills, more jobs and more experienced SMMEs. Everybody wins.

The roads agency provides SMMEs on the project with training, which includes a CETA-accredited skills programme for construction to SMME owners, supervisors and foremen. The training also includes the development of construction tender documents; workplace

training, mentoring and assessment of SMME contractors during the construction. There’s also retraining, final assessment and certification of SMMEs on completion of the skills programme, as well as CIDB upgrades upon completion of the work done by SMMEs.

“The response from the community has been very positive,” Peterson said.

“The involvement of leaders of the community in the project’s planning stage was a strategic decision. This way, the community can ‘own’ the project. The project liaison committee sits every month to discuss the work and any community issues. The employment of local labour was done through the community’s normal recruitment processes, so the level of participation is very high. The proof of the communities’ support of this project is evident in the high level of performance from the people who are working on it – and this is a labour-intensive programme.”

Our award-winning Freeway
Management System

SANRAL’s use of cutting-edge technology to make South Africa’s roads safer is increasingly being noticed by industry experts.

In mid-February, SANRAL received the Award for Excellence from the Intelligent Transport Society of SA (ITSSA). The award recognises the innovation behind SANRAL’s Intelligent Transport System project.

It was received on behalf of the agency by Kersen Naidoo, SANRAL’s Eastern Region ITS Project Manager.

The i-Transport and UATP Conference and Exhibition is a well-established event on the transport calendar. It serves as a platform for knowledge sharing and to promote the sustainable deployment of ITS projects.

This year’s conference theme, Future of Public Transport: Go Green – Go Smart, reflects the need to improve transport efficiency, to reduce the carbon footprint of the transport sector and to encourage shifts to other modes of

transport. This theme speaks to the relationship between public transport and intelligent transport systems, specifically.

While SANRAL received the ITSSA Award for Excellence for the Freeway Management System (FMS) in the Western Cape, the submission was also judged for the larger national FMS project, which extends to Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

These projects have had significant impacts on the motoring public by relaying real-time information on the flow of traffic.

“It was a great honour to receive this award on behalf of SANRAL,” Naidoo said.

“Our team of engineers can be proud of the world-class system they have developed and continue to maintain. This is a great example of how infrastructure improves the quality of life of commuters and sustains the economy of the country.”