Vodacom South Africa has partnered with the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) to ensure traffic lights along major intersections operate during load shedding.

Electricity will be sourced from Vodacom’s nearby buildings to power traffic lights. Initially, Vodacom will provide backup power to the traffic lights at intersections near the Vodacom campus in Midrand, specifically on 13^th Road and Vodacom Boulevard (entrance and exit), as well as Lever Road and Vodacom Boulevard. The plan, however, is to expand this to other intersections around the city.

CEO of Vodacom South Africa Sitho Mdlalose said the deal emphasises the importance of business and government working together to tackle societal challenges.

“Motorists in the area can spend an unnecessarily extended amount of time stuck in traffic because of non-functioning traffic lights. And when people are running late, this hinders their productivity, which in turn negatively affects our economy,” he said.

“Class 3 arterials like Lever Road perform an important network function as they provide connections between the various suburban areas located in Midrand and act as important collectors delivering traffic to the major class-2 arterials such as New Road and the N1 freeway,” said JRA acting CEO Zweli Nyathi.

“The formalisation of this partnership with Vodacom will help ease load shedding traffic congestion along surrounding routes and bring relief to drivers of between 2 000 and 3 000 vehicles travelling in both directions on Lever Road during morning and afternoon peak hours.”

Redesign

From a technical perspective, the partnership involves a JRA redesign of the signal wiring at the intersections in question. This will ensure that electricity from the Vodacom campus kicks in when load shedding occurs. The JRA will handle all the infrastructure works outside of the Vodacom campus boundaries, while the company will manage any necessary infrastructure changes within the campus boundaries.

Joburg MMC for transport Kenny Kunene said: “The 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, keep traffic flowing during load shedding.

Read: ‘Load shedding disastrous for Vodacom’: Shameel Joosub

“This joining of hands with Vodacom – as well as the 39 other service-level agreements 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 at school,” he said in a statement. – © 2023 NewsCentral Media