Cape Town - Melkbosstrand residents have started a petition demanding the City place traffic calming measures on Otto du Plessis Drive from Blouberg Road to Sir David Baird Drive.
This follows several fatal car crashes and numerous serious injuries. The residents claim that the City had ignored their pleas for too long.
The petition’s author, Kobus Vermeulen, said that in this dangerous road, speeding cars shared the road with cyclists and pedestrians and had claimed many lives. Vermeulen said calls and e-mails to the City had gone unanswered or ignored.
Smokie la Grange, the Melkbosstrand Residents Association chairperson, said that for the past 25 years she had been advocating for traffic calming measures on this stretch of the road.
“One has to come down on Friday or Saturday night when everyone has been paid to see how the drivers behave on the road. I have been in Melkbosstrand for 37 years and for 25 of those I have been campaigning for traffic calming measures.
“We have had several accidents around the top, northern and Koeberg end of the Otto du Plessis Drive because of driver negligence. We have put in applications for rumble strips and diamond bumps and we can’t get them,” she said.
La Grange said that on Otto du Plessis Drive the City traffic department had only conducted five traffic assessments.
“Every year I put in a C3 for a traffic assessment. We are allowed to ask for traffic intervention only once a quarter, which is not enough. In 11th Avenue, the City sent the traffic department during school holidays to undertake a traffic assessment while there was no traffic, or would come after 9am when there is no traffic only to tell us that there is not enough traffic for calming measures,” she said.
Urban Mobility Mayco member Rob Quintas said various requests to consider speed control measures along the section of Otto du Plessis Drive were made. However, the City has no plans to implement traffic calming measures along this road.
Quintas said due consideration has been given to the speed limit along the section between the Dolphin Beach Hotel and Sir David Baird Drive, which would soon be reduced to 50km/h in the interests of pedestrian safety. He said a signage layout plan was being prepared.
“We are aiming to implement these as soon as possible, in time for the summer 2022 season,” he said.
Quintas said driver behaviour remained a key factor and all drivers must take responsibility for their driving and be compelled to adhere to the rules of the road.
mthuthuzeli.ntseku@inl.co.za