Traffic jam expected until 2020
WIDER JAN SMUTS: A map showing the affected route. WIDER JAN SMUTS: A map showing the affected route.
Rosebank and Dunkeld residents and office workers face a traffic nightmare, congestion and rat running until mid-2020.
The congested Jan Smuts Avenue is to be widened between the Zoo Lake area to Bompas Road.
Ward councillor Tim Truluck said the roadworks would affect the suburbs of Saxonwold, Parkwood, Rosebank, Parktown North, Dunkeld and Dunkeld West.
The bad news is that the old trees along the route will be removed.
However, Truluck said a heritage study had been conducted and the Johannesburg Roads Agency would provide a tree for planting in the neighbourhood green areas for every tree removed.
“No trees will be replanted in the road reserve,” he said.
Truluck explains the process:
There will be two lanes on both sides going from Erlswold Road to just after Bolton Road; and again from Jellicoe Avenue to just before Bompas Road.
There will be a central median that will divide the two sides.
This means that some roads - Westwold Way, Ashwold and Rutland avenues, Sussex and Newport roads, 12th Avenue and Smits Road - will be left-turn in and out only.
Intersections will have marked pedestrian crossings and wheelchair slopes - no new traffic lights or stop streets will be installed.
There will be a 1.5m-wide sidewalk and a 1m planted area between the sidewalk and road on both
sides.
Services will have to be removed or realigned.
The whole road reserve will be used, so properties will not be able to use it for parking anymore - whatever has been built over it will need to be demolished and the property owners notified.
One side of the road will be done at a time, allowing two lanes still to be used for traffic flow - but, warned Truluck - there would be congestion and rat running.