Hope in sight for congestion on Bayhead Road

Transnet is aiming for July completion of the R256-m upgrade project on Bayhead Road, port manager Ricky Bhikraj told FTW last week. The R256-m project is to construct a 1.5-km dual carriageway from Langeberg Road to Pier 1, with two truck staging areas designed to take a total of 136 trucks. Bayhead road provides the only access to the container terminal at Pier 1 and Durban Container Terminal (DCT) Pier 2, the Island View oil and chemical terminal and its accompanying bulk terminals. This road was formerly single carriageway from Pier 2 to Pier 1, and terminal congestion has frequently led to traffic jams extending kilometres back along the Old South Coast Road to the Solomon Mahlangu Drive (previously Edwin Swales VC Drive) freeway system leading in and out of Durban to the N3 main route to Johannesburg. It is hoped that the upgrading of Bayhead Road to an all-dualcarriageway road will play a major role in alleviating these costly and timeconsuming traffic jams. It is currently 68% complete, and – despite a national shortage of bitumen, which a site engineer told FTW had been overcome on the Bayhead project – is still expected to be complete by July.