'City must address congestion outside Cape depots'

Cape Town’s Port Liaison Forum (PLF) has called on the city to find solutions to the ongoing truck congestion outside container depots. According to Mike Walwyn, PLF chairman, congestion outside the container depot just off the Koeberg intersection on the M5 in Maitland is proving to be exceptionally problematic. “Traffic backs up very quickly at the intersection coming off the highway causing severe congestion in Royal Street,” he told FTW. “Both trucks and cars are affected and it has become imperative that we find some solution to this. It also affects the turnaround of containers and has an impact on operations all round.” He said the City of Cape Town had been approached to look for possible solutions. General industry consensus is that an added lane that can be dedicated to the turning lane (heading towards the container depot) will solve the problem, but a city spokesman said it was not necessarily as simple as that. “We will have to do a proper investigation. If there are electrical cables in that area, for instance, they will have to be moved before another lane can be added. That involves significant costs and budgets are not able to accommodate such ad hoc requests,” he said. According to the spokesman, if there are no cables it would be possible to add another lane but it would have to be considered at a provincial level as well. “We will look at the problem and investigate what possible solutions exist.” According to Walwyn, challenges at container depots have major impact on traffic in the city and it is important for the PLF to work with city officials. “There are other depots, for instance, where the queues are spilling out into public roads and traffic officers are imposing fines on those vehicles. In some cases these trucks are parking in the streets as they wait to enter the depots and also get fined, but there are no facilities for parking and where do they go?” He said by working with the city and traffic officials far more could be achieved. “It is an ongoing problem and we believe by involving the city and officials we can find solutions that benefit all those involved.” INSERT & CAPTION There are depots, for instance, where the queues are spilling out into public roads and traffic officers are imposing fines on those vehicles. – Mike Walwyn