Cape Town traffic management tested to the extreme

Cape Town traffic management tested to the extreme

The City of Cape Town’s Freeway Management System (FMS) was put to the test as extreme storms caused 48 hours of havoc last week.


Since 2010 the FMS has been operated jointly by The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral), the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Government.

“During the time that the storm battered Cape Town and surrounds, the ability to coordinate a multi-agency response proved invaluable,” says Randall Cable, Sanral’s engineering manager: operations.

A total of 132 incidents were reported with 116 confirmed freeway incidents over this period. Of this number, 104 were attended to on-scene and included:

  • 24 crashes involving 48 vehicles;
  • 61 stationary vehicles;
  • two instances of flooding;
  • five incidents of road debris, including trees;
  • six lost loads;
  • four animals in the road; and
  • two incidents of a criminal nature.

The average time taken to detect incidents was less than three minutes (00:02:51 to be exact), and the average time for clearance of incidents was 00:48:25, despite some lanes having to be closed.

Approximately 240 CCTV cameras are strategically placed along Cape Town’s major freeways. These feed real-time information on traffic conditions to the Cape Town FMS.

Real-time updates are available at www.i-traffic.co.za and on Twitter.

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Focus on Transport

FOCUS on Transport and Logistics is the oldest and most respected transport and logistics publication in southern Africa.
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