Durban residents provided their input on the proposed road upgrades on the N2 freeway between the Isipingo Interchange (Km 2.7) and the Edwin Swales Interchange (Km 11.8) which will ease traffic congestion and prevent accidents.
The SA National Roads Agency SOC Ltd (Sanral), engineers and the environmental consultants Terratest addressed the public at Mobeni Heights Civic Hall in Chatsworth on Monday.
Bluff Ratepayers and Residents’ Association (BRRA) chairperson Norman Gilbert said that they are very encouraged by the attempts to improve the quality of the national and regional roads and highways around Durban and the South Durban Basin in particular.
“As residents of the Bluff, we are at times held hostage by unscrupulous truck drivers using the Bluff to get to the port, blocking driveways and roads in our residential neighbourhood. The main access road to the Bluff which is Solomon Mahlangu Drive is often reduced from three to just a single lane by trucks staging to the container depots,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert added that the section of highway between Isipingo and the R610 interchange is long overdue for an upgrade and he is interested to see what Sanral has planned.
Sanral’s Eastern Region project manager, Salome Naicker, said that the project will cost about R1.9 billion.
Naicker said: “The scope of this project excludes work on both Isipingo Interchange and Edwin Swales Interchange.”
Naicker said Sanral continues with the upgrades to the N2 from Lovu River to the uMdloti Interchange and N3 between Pietermaritzburg and Durban which started in 2021 and will take up to 10 years to complete.
In their statement, Sanral explained the importance of the N2/N3 in KwaZulu-Natal as it has become an important part of Sanral’s plan to refurbish and strengthen the routes that connect South Africa’s main industrial hubs.
Sanral said: “For companies and residents in the area, this is now bearing fruit in terms of local economic growth and job creation. Our flagship projects are the N2/N3 corridor upgrades, which are expected to take between eight to 10 years to complete and create up to 15 000 job opportunities over the duration of construction.”
The statement added that the upgrade of the N2 will focus on a 55km length of road from Lovu River on the South Coast to uMdloti on the North Coast.
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