I had occasion - albeit a rare one - to drive to Durban a week ago. I expected that the N3 tollroad would be a breeze. It was the opposite. The excessive number of construction/repair projects on the route going down, had me asking myself why I didn't count 'em.
I came back the day my fairy godmother clearly had a bad-hair day. The Van Reenen's Pass was closed the entire day because two trucks had an altercation. My IT guru phoned me bright'n early to alert me and I drove the old route from Estcourt via the Sterkfontein Dam and Oliviershoek Pass. Beautiful from a scenic perspective, but with pot-holes designed to swallow buses, and of course, we were down to 40 k.p.h. because all the mega-trucks had been routed on to it. No shoulder, narrow road, one lane, and no possibility of overtaking. Even the Shongololos could cross the road in safety!
I did count the number of major construction projects reducing the N3 to one lane in my particular direction on the way back. Ten of them. That excluded whatever was between Estcourt and Harrismith, where I was finally able to rejoin the freeway. The black comedy continued there as well, as there was a major construction project going on at the entrance to Harrismith and you went through yet another ghastly deviation just to get through the town.
All this speaks to one simple fact: Road construction/repair planning of any sort has gone out of the window. There were no lane marker lines for kilometer after kilometre and most crucial of all - no cats-eyes in high mist areas. The blurry pic (taken at 120 k.p.h.) was of one of the few warnings about no road markings. So the accident rate this year will be courtesy of Jeff Radebe, the Minister of Road
Chaos and his shambolic Transport department. Why on earth could all this work not have been done to ensure clear, construction-free roads for the major year-end holiday season? Lord alone knows...
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