Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) says it plans to introduce an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) amid growing frustration from motorists on the current state of traffic light infrastructure in the city.<\/p>\n
According to the Sandton Chronicle<\/a>, Darryl Thomas, head of mobility and freight at JRA,\u00a0 said that the ATMS would assist in reducing traffic congestion by improving the efficiency of existing road infrastructures.<\/p>\n The new system would integrate traffic monitoring technologies and transmit real-time traffic data to and from the roadside, the community paper reported.<\/p>\n JRA said that the most commonly reported signal faults were due to vandalism, cable theft or power failures.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are aware of these faults and are addressing them by requesting an increase to our budget to hire more traffic signal maintenance staff,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n According to the JRA, it only has only one technician for every 170 traffic lights in the city.<\/p>\n The road agency highlighted that faulty traffic lights were more likely to occur in those areas where construction was taking place – so areas like Sandton, Rosebank and the Johannesburg CBD.<\/p>\n The city owned agency said that it strives to repair 90% of faulty traffic signals within 24 hours but faults due to power outages take longer to fix (on average 171 hours) because they require the involvement of the relevant power entities to restore power.<\/p>\n “Over the past three years, R28 million has been spent replacing aging controller Johannesburg has by far the largest city road network (13,428km) in the country with a proportionate 2,135 number of traffic light intersections to keep the City\u2019s 1.669 million licensed vehicle owners and other road users mobile, the JRA pointed out.<\/p>\n Joburg traffic signals by the Numbers:<\/p>\n The JRA recently launched a Find&Fix mobile app for easier reporting of faulty traffic More on Joburg<\/strong><\/p>\n How long it takes to fix Joburg traffic lights<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Joburg traffic light mess<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nequipment and R40 million replacing old lead encased cables, making Joburg\u2019s traffic signals less prone to faults in wet weather. Deployment of innovative earthing mats is also underway to protect traffic signals in areas most susceptible to lightning,” it said in a statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n
\nsignals. Such reports are logged directly with the technical teams and road users can also follow progress reports on when the signals have been fixed, it said.<\/p>\n