Work begins on Bayhead Road extension

The flow of seafreight traffic through the Port of Durban should be vastly improved after the finish of the dual carriageway extension on Bayhead Road – the sole road access to the two major container terminals. Work has now started, and the contractors expect to complete it by April, 2012. The current road handles about 200 000 container truck movements each month. The upgrade of the roadway (as indicated on the graphic) will be to realign a portion of the road and extend the dual carriageway all the way from the Langeberg Road turnoff to Durban Container Terminal on Pier 2, to the Pier 1 terminal and the big dry bulk and oil terminals of the Bluff and Island View. But an even more critical part of the plan is to have two extensive staging areas built on land in the Kings Rest area (adjacent to the tank washout facility) – essentially parking areas for the terminals’ overflow of vehicles. Solly Kuppan, the project’s liaison and communication manager, and a transportation planner with the consulting engineers Aurecon, told FTW that the present vehicle capacity of the Bayhead Road could more than handle the traffic flow – if it could be kept moving. “But,” he added, “the problem starts when you have stationary vehicles with nowhere to go, parked by the roadside and blocking the roadway.” This frequently leads to traffic jams as long as five/ six kilometres – blocking free traffic movement on the two-lane Old South Coast Road and the multilane highway of Edwin Swales VC Drive – which is the main highway in and out of the Durban terminal network. “The staging areas will have capacity for about 120 vehicles,” said Kuppan, “with a system to call them to the respective terminals where they are to be loaded/ unloaded.” This, he added, will improve the circulation of the container trucks, and keep them off the Bayhead Road until the terminal is clear to take them. Another essential element in the attempts to improve the flow of vehicles in the Bayhead area of the port is the direct link road to Edwin Swales VC Drive. But, said Kuppan, whether planning for this gets a ‘yeah’ or a ‘nay’ will only be decided after the current extension is completed, in two years’ time.