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The state of Johannesburg’s traffic light infrastructure is dire, with a high proportion of the city’s traffic lights frequently being non-operational.
The Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) estimates it will cost around R70 million to fix and attend to damaged and stolen traffic lights across the city.
MyBroadband asked the JRA why so many lights in Johannesburg aren’t functioning and about its plans to address the issue, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Johannesburg councillor and Roads and Transport Portfolio Committee Member Sean Kreusch said only 15 of the 1,400-odd uninterrupted power supplies installed at traffic lights in the metro remain.
“Most of those have either been smashed open or driven over in a vehicle accident and cleared out, stolen,” said Kreusch.
He highlighted the JRA’s budget, which has dwindled recently, as a major contributor to its inability to fix traffic lights timeously.
The JRA’s budget for the 2016/17 financial year was roughly R1.4 billion. This figure had dropped to R809 million by the 2023/24 financial year.
The R70-million figure to fix traffic lights would consume a significant portion of its annual budget.
“Over a period of seven or eight years, the JRA budget has shrunk to 54% of what it was in 2016,” said Kreusch.
“Signals have become a casualty of the financial constraints of the city.”
He added that there are probably just two or three teams managing over 2,000 signals in Johannesburg.
Of these, roughly 400 are provincial traffic signals, which the JRA must still manage.
“Those 400 signals from province are under the management of the JRA, but coupled with that, you’ve got power supply from City Power as well as Eskom,”
“So you’ve got these complexities between two electricity providers, coupled with the fact that you have got the highest pole-over rate in the country.”
By pole-over rate, Kreusch referred to the frequency of motorists hitting traffic lights due to negligence, poor driving, or various other issues.
In August 2024, Sipho Nhlapo, a senior manager at the JRA, said the issue of traffic lights frequently being out in Johannesburg relates to law enforcement rather than service delivery.
He said the city faces the challenge of infrastructure thieves and opportunists who tamper with traffic lights to control traffic and, hopefully, earn some money.
“The biggest problem we are facing as the government is theft, people who are vandalising the traffic lights,” said Nhlapo.
“Firstly, the vandalism was people stealing cable. This is affecting Eskom and City Power, who supply energy to these traffic lights.”
He said the JRA had set its sights on opportunistic vagrants who deliberately take traffic lights offline to direct traffic, adding that those caught face long prison sentences.
“We have seen people being sentenced to 20 years about a month ago, the other one for 18 years for tampering with infrastructure,” said Nhlapo.
“These are more enforcement issues than service delivery issues.”
He said the JRA works with private-sector players to address these challenges and that some of the arrests had come from private security companies working with community forums.
Having more eyes on traffic lights is critical to addressing the issue. Nhlapo said some private companies had allowed the JRA to connect lights to their backup power and monitor them using their surveillance systems.
“The advantage with that is some of these companies have cameras that can watch the traffic lights. They also have private security companies that go around their facilities to check,” he said.
The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport, in November 2024, launched the “Adopt and Protect a Robot” campaign, which also aims to reduce traffic light outages through collaboration with private businesses.
The traffic light poles are cut with an angle grinder at the bottom and just left. You need an expensive angle grinder to to this. The cost of the angle grinder does not justify the few rand you get for the copper. The contract people that get the tender to install the new lights, should be checked. The people that hand out the tenders should be checked. Follow the money trail!!
You make a great point about the need to look deeper into the whole process, especially when it comes to the value of the equipment used and the potential for corruption. It’s crazy how much damage can be done just for a few rand. Definitely sounds like there’s a larger issue with oversight—whether it’s in the hands of the contractors or those awarding the tenders. Following the money trail might uncover some serious gaps. Someone needs to be held accountable for these unnecessary costs and damage to infrastructure.
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