Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s Directorate for Urban Mobility through its road infrastructure management department has resumed its efforts to tackle the city’s growing pothole challenges.
Following a reprieve from recent heavy rains, the City department sent its teams to venture into local communities once more to repair and restore road infrastructure.
According to the City, Cape Town roads were among other forms of infrastructure greatly impacted by the continuous rainy and wet weather conditions.
The City’s Mayco member for urban mobility, Rob Quintas, said while the City’s roads infrastructure management teams were prioritising repairs according to the impacted roads’ classification criteria, officials would continue recording and responding to residents’ reported incidents.
Quintas said: “The volume and intensity of the rain we experienced over the past few weeks has caused damage to many of our roads across the metro. The SA Weather Service confirmed that Cape Town recorded the most rainfall over this period since 1965. This is extraordinary, and we can see the impact on our road network.”
“Our teams are hard at work. However, repairs on high-order roads have to be prioritised as these are our busiest roads with the highest traffic volumes.”
Quintas said that the City applies different criteria before deciding which potholes to attend to first, but that it is making every effort to get to all areas as soon as possible.
Criteria for the classification of road fixtures according to the City, include prioritising fixing roads with a higher mobility function with higher volumes of traffic and speed and temporarily filling potholes in winter, as permanent repairs can only take place in summer.
He said: “The City makes an effort to maintain the road network with resurfacing and resealing interventions as far as the weather allows. These maintenance projects prolong the lifespan of our road structure. Our resurfacing and resealing programmes start in drier weather conditions.
“All roads require resurfacing during their life cycle, and the volume of traffic the road carries will determine how long a surface lasts. I want to thank residents for their patience and continuous support while we conduct repairs as best and speedily as we can,” Quintas said.