Watch broken roads drivers#

The catch-up plan entailed creating a priority list of roads riddled with bad potholes and fixing the road defects, and at the top of the plan were the main priority roads and those mostly used by motorists. Officials pointed out that the maintenance backlog prompted the City to come up with a catch-up plan aimed at addressing the barrage of potholes caused by weather conditions including the continuous rain. The budget constraints had limited the number of repair work the roads department had been able to undertake, however, the municipality told the Advertiser that plans were being made to find the money to tackle the pothole problem, saying it remained optimistic that more money would be subsequently made available to deal with the issue.

However, no response was received at the time of compiling this report.Įarly this year, the metro said council was trying to help by carrying out regular repairs, but the department encountered budget constraints to deal with the maintenance backlog created over the past couple of months by bad weather, which in turn left them having to prioritise repair works for main priority roads. The Advertiser has reached out to the metro for comment and to find out whether residents were allowed to repair potholes or if they need to apply for permission to do any form of roadwork, including filling up potholes on the City’s roads. To reflect the deep frustration that people have with the roads, social media users took to Facebook pages where they posted photos highlighting cracks and craters in the decaying City’s roads. Some of the community members who took it upon themselves to address the potholes on the City’s roads put broken bricks followed by sand or concrete and limestones to fill them up, as a temporary solution to avoid potentially fatal accidents or damages to peoples’ vehicles. They feel the problem was being ignored by the council. In Boksburg, residents who have grown tired of waiting for local authorities to repair the roads, resorted to taking matters into their own hands and repairing the road defects. “We have tried several times to report the matter to the metro, but nothing has happened,” said Holtzhausen. He called on the council to do something regarding the conditions of all the roads in town because they are hurting businesses.

Shaun Holtzhausen, who operates a business next to the potholes, said he has been witnessing motorists continuously negotiate their way around the potholes on the road for more than five months now. I had already hit the potholes a couple of times.” said motorist Marieta Engelbrecht.Īnother road user Esmarie Prinsloo, who works for a security company in the area, said she had been in several near-miss incidents in the last few months as she swerved away from the potholes and also avoided crashing into delivery trucks. “I use this road to travel to work and back home and I have to navigate around these suspension-destroying potholes every single day.

Watch broken roads drivers#

They said apart from being safety risks, the potholes are a financial burden to motorists as many drivers have had to buy new tyres after their wheels had gone into the potholes. Some of the holes are right in the middle of the road and it is hard to avoid them as the road has become narrow because of the growing defects.ĭrivers, who work in and around the area, claimed that the defects to the road surface were reported to the metro numerous times since last year.

This stretch of road near the traffic lights is filled with multiple potholes, forcing motorists to drive on the sides of the road with others even swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting the multiplying holes.