Traffic light theft and vandalism: What is Cape Town doing right that Johannesburg isn’t?
The City of Cape Town’s Roberto Quintas shares their secret to success.
Bongani Bingwa interviews Roberto Quintas, the City of Cape Town's Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility.
Listen below:
Unlike Johannesburg, Cape Town's traffic lights are fully operational.
Quintas attributes Cape Town's success to significant investments to upgrade and safeguard traffic signal infrastructure.
"A big chunk is spent to prevent deterioration, theft, vandalism and damage of the signal infrastructure."
- Roberto Quintas, Urban Mobility - City of Cape Town
One of the primary challenges surrounding vandalism is cable theft, which has been rampant in certain parts of Cape Town.
To combat this, Quintas explains that the City has implemented submersible chambers, where traffic signals are housed in a concrete base that is buried underground.
These chambers are completely tamper-proof, and the signals are free from copper cables, using lithium-ion batteries instead.
Additionally, each chamber has alarms that detect any digging attempts, triggering a vibration sensor that sends an immediate alert to nearby law enforcement.
"Those have been very, very successful where we have implemented them, and our nightmare intersections are working like clockwork."
- Roberto Quintas, Urban Mobility - City of Cape Town
Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the interview.