End in sight for Durban port access gridlock

The stranglehold on the flow of SA’s container sea trade is about to be resolved following the naming of the contractors for the long-awaited extension of the dual-carriageway on Bayhead Road. This road is the only access road to the Port of Durban’s two major container terminals – which handle 65% of SA’s container traffic, equivalent to about 200 000 container truck movements each month – and the streams of heavy commercial vehicles (HCVs) hauling to and from the big dry bulk and oil terminals of the Bluff and Island View. It currently operates as a dual carriageway only as far as the turnoff to Durban Container Terminal on Pier 2. But, since the development of Pier 1 as a second container terminal further along Bayhead Road, the amount of traffic has increased dramatically, with the numbers of heavy container trucks almost doubling. Add to that the legions of tanker-trailer HCVs carting lubricating oil, fuel and cooking oil for domestic and cross-border distribution fed by the Island View storage tanks. Then tack on numbers of those muscular dry bulk vehicle units there to carry things like grain and dry chemicals – mix them together in the single pot which is Bayhead Road, and see what you get. What you get, according to truckers and other port users, is the entire length of the road frequently gridlocked with trucks. At times this causes traffic jams of trucks extending back as far as five/six kilometres – and blocking free traffic movement on the two-lane Old South Coast Road and the multiple-lane highway of Edwin Swales Drive, the key main road in and out of the Durban terminal operations. It upsets not only container truckers but other port users. Ship agents often complain to FTW of their vessels sailing shortshipped, and forwarders of their cargoes missing their sailings because of the problem of gridlocked roads. A partial answer to all this (making Bayhead Road all dual carriageway), is getting closer, said Solly Kuppan, transportation planner of the construction managers – the Aurecon Group. He revealed to FTW last week that the contractors for the road extension were Stefanutti Stocks Civil, and that a stakeholders’ meeting was being held in Durban.