Vodacom to help keep traffic lights on in Johannesburg
Vodacom South Africa and the Johannesburg Roads Agency are partnering to ensure that traffic lights at busy intersections operate during load shedding.
Through a Service Level Agreement (SLA), Vodacom will provide power from its adjacent building to power the traffic lights.
Vodacom will supply backup power to the traffic lights at the intersections near its campus in Midrand, particularly 13th Road and Vodacom Boulevard (entrance and exit), as well as Lever Road and Vodacom Boulevard.
Sitho Mdlalose, CEO of Vodacom South Africa, said that the partnership emphasises the importance of business and government working together to tackle South Africa’s problems.
“Motorists in the area can spend an unnecessarily extended amount of time stuck in traffic because of non-functioning traffic lights in the area. And when people are running late, this hinders their productivity, which, in turn negatively affects our economy,” Mdlalose said.
Additionally, non-functioning traffic lights can cause a rise in criminal activity, as well as an increase in accidents.
“Class 3 arterials like Lever Road perform an important network function as they provide connections between the various suburban areas located within Midrand and act as important collectors delivering traffic to the major class 2 arterials such as New Road and the N1 freeway,” JRA Acting CEO Zweli Nyathi said.
“Therefore, JRA is delighted with the formalisation of this partnership with Vodacom, which will help ease load shedding traffic congestion along surrounding routes and bring relief to road users of between 2000 and 3000 vehicles travelling in both directions on Lever Road during morning and afternoon peak hour.”
From a technical standpoint, the partnership involves JRA redesigning the signal wiring at the intersections in question, ensuring that the electricity from the Vodacom campus kicks in when load shedding starts.
JRA will handle all the infrastructure outside on the campus boundaries, whilst Vodacom will handle all the necessary infrastructure changes within the campus boundaries.
Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Transport Councillor Kenny Kunene said that there is also widespread interest from several companies to sign up for the Traffic Signal Backup Power Initiative.
“JRA is inundated with requests from corporates, schools and even NGOs across Johannesburg willing to partner with the entity in keeping the City’s traffic lights on and most essentially, keeping traffic flowing during load shedding,” Kunene said.
“This joining of hands today with Vodacom as well as the 39 other Service Level Agreements that are in progress, is a positive boost to growing our local economy as less time in congested traffic means more productive time at the office, the factory, and the school.”
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