Information glitch jams up Bayhead Road

A miscommunication of
information, in which
Transnet Freight Rail (TFR)
was wrongly accused, upset
the entire business community
at the southern end of
Durban harbour alongside the
container terminals last week.
According to David
Wilkinson, MD of Elcon
Cranes, without notice to
the business community, 70
concrete bollards were erected
on a section of Bayhead Road,
reducing this proudly just
completed dual-carriageway
to a one-lane, contra-flow
road, while they laid a new rail
siding.
Witnessed by FTW, this led
to a more than five-kilometre,
three-lane jam up of trucks
bound for the terminals,
stretching all the way along
Bayhead Road, and well into
South Coast Road and across
the new bridge leading over
the railway to Sydney Road.
There are an estimated 200
businesses on the waterside
of the Bayhead Road, and all
are completely dependent on
it for delivery and collection
access. This unpublicised TFR
work, said Wilkinson, cost all
of them – especially the three
mobile crane hire companies,
Elcon, Johnson Crane Hire and
CTC Cranes – a lot of money,
not to mention frustration.
While Durban Harbour
Carriers’ Association (DHCA)
chairman, Kevin Martin,
told FTW that the lack of
notice from TFR was totally
unprofessional, it turns out
that it was not TFR that was
laying the new rail siding. It
was, in fact, according to TFR
spokesman, Selby Dlamini,
a Transnet National Ports
Authority (TNPA) project.
And, according to Neil
Smith, TNPA maintenance
manager for roads and tracks,
they followed all the correct
procedures.
“We had to lay a new line,”
he told FTW, “because the old
one was in a dangerous state.
Because it (Bayhead Road) is a
public road, we have to ask the
city for occupation three weeks
in advance of doing the job.
“They then advise the
Chamber of Commerce, who,
in turn advise all the members
of the business community.”
But somewhere in this
communications loop a link
has failed, because TNPA
appropriately advised the
Ethekwini municipality roads
department, and received
permission to “temporarily
and partially close the road”
and for “traffic to be diverted
onto a contra-flow lane”. This,
with the reference number
18/1/9, was forwarded to
Smith by the deputy head of
the roads system management
– whose signature is
indecipherable.
But this advice went no
further down the line, with
everyone in the port area and
in the communication loop
unaware of the project until
Bayhead Road was jammed up
for kilometres.
The FTW task now
is to find out why the
communication loop failed,
and also why the TNPA did
not advise the Durban Ports
Committee and Transnet Port
Terminals (TPT), its own main
tenant of the Durban container
terminal and Pier 1 terminal,
as it is supposed to do when
any port project work is due to
be undertaken.