Theft and vandalism fuel Pietermaritzburg traffic light crisis

Theft, vandalism and repeated infrastructure failures are fuelling a growing traffic light crisis across Pietermaritzburg, disrupting traffic flow and causing severe congestion on key routes. Safe City Msunduzi said it had detected three recent incidents of tampering with traffic signal infrastructure, while the municipality said cable theft, vandalism and damage to signal controllers were behind many of the outages. At least 11 key intersections are affected by non-operational traffic lights, causing lengthy delays during peak periods and forcing motorists to treat busy intersections as makeshift four-way stops.

Safe City Msunduzi manager Jason Herbert said the increase in outages was having a noticeable impact on the flow of traffic across the city. We have noted severe traffic congestion in the city due to the outages; we were told that it was due to the numerous cable faults in the Church Street area. “We have also been assisting in reporting when we see these outages.

We have seen that there have been no serious accidents, rather more fender benders,” Herbert said. He said that the three tampering incidents detected by Safe City had been reported to SAPS. Msunduzi Municipality said the scale of the problem went beyond ordinary technical faults.

[paywall]

“The majority of the outages are not due to routine technical faults, but are the result of vandalism, cable theft and damage to traffic signal controllers. These criminal acts continue to disrupt traffic flow, compromise road safety and place an unnecessary financial burden on the municipality,” it said. The municipality appealed to residents to report suspicious activity around traffic signal infrastructure.“We call on residents to report any suspicious activity or acts of vandalism involving traffic signal infrastructure to [SAPS] or municipal law enforcement.

[/paywall]