The Civil Engineering Contractor February 2019 | Page 24

TECHNOLOGY
New life for SA roads
S
With the exceptions
of national roads, and
provincial roads in
Gauteng and the Western
Cape, South Africa’s
provincial, municipal,
and rural road and bridge
infrastructure is in a
precarious condition.
outh Africa’s latest SAICE
infrastructure scorecard paints
a mixed picture as far as road
infrastructure is concerned: a
creditable B for Sanral’s national
road network is offset by a D for
paved provincial roads; C- for
paved metropolitan roads; D- for
other paved municipal roads; and
E for provincial, metropolitan, and
municipal gravel roads.
Grade E, by the way, stands for
‘unfit for purpose’ — infrastructure
that has failed; D is infrastructure
‘not coping with demand’; and C is
‘satisfactory for now’.
The road network is highly
variable, much of it well beyond the
20-year theoretical design life and
suffering from poor maintenance.
In the absence of adequate
maintenance, the deterioration in
our roads is accelerating. SAICE’s
report states: “Of the nation’s
road network of approximately
750 000km, Sanral controls
21 403km and maintains them to
a high standard. The proportion
in ‘poor’ to ‘very poor’ condition
has crept slightly above the
international benchmark of 10%,
mainly due to the acquisition
of provincial roads in poorer
condition. Constraints on funding
due to revenue shortfalls in toll
operations may affect operational
and maintenance requirements.
Despite this, the overall change
in condition of national roads has
Coreslab’s proposed pre-stressed I
8 precast beams were a more cost-
effective method of constructing the
structure and Nyeleti Consulting, the
consulting engineer, incorporated its
suggestion into their design.
22 | CEC February 2019
www.civilsonline.co.za
By Eamonn Ryan