Have a say on Little Glen

A public participation process is set to take place for the renaming of the Little Glen Nature Reserve in Camps Bay.

The City of Cape Town’s naming and nomination committee made the recommendation to carry out the process earlier this month.

The Camps Bay Ratepayers and Residents’ Association (CBRRA) submitted a proposal to the City that the nature reserve be renamed in honour of the late Arthur Shephard.

Shephard coordinated the transformation of this nature reserve from a run-down underused public space to an area that is beautifully landscaped, secure and popular among visitors and the local community of Camps Bay, explains committee chairperson Brett Herron.

“According to Chris Willemse, chairperson of the CBRRA, Shephard contributed a lot of his personal time and money to transform this gem. “The local community, volunteers and the City assisted him in realising this dream,” he says.

“Once the mayor has approved this recommendation, the City’s public participation unit will commence with the process of requesting comment and input from residents and interested and affected parties in Camps Bay.”

This article was published on News 24 for the Peoples Post and can be found here https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/Peoples-Post/have-a-say-on-little-glen-20171127

CCT sewage shame

BY MARK JACKSON 

OCTOBER 31, 2017

In December last year, I made a short documentary called ‘Bay of Sewage’. It went viral, getting 50,000 hits in the first 10 days. I’m planning a sequel, called ‘Cape of Sewage’. Actually, I hope to call it ‘Sewage Solutions’. Because sewage is not rocket science, and with the right people, we can easily fix this crisis.

What? Another crisis?

Let me explain. In the 60s and 70s, the world tragically gave Thalidomide to pregnant mothers, and sprayed DDT to kill mosquitoes. And we thought that pumping raw sewage out to sea was alright.  Since then, the world has moved on. But in terms of marine sewage outfalls, Cape Town hasn’t progressed.

At Camps Bay, Hout Bay, and Mouille Point, we pump out a combined total of about 47Ml per day.That’s 19 Olympic-sized swimming pools.  A lot of human waste (and a lot of recyclable water).

But since the 70s, something else has changed too. Cape Town, Camps Bay, and Hout Bay have doubled, quadrupled or grown ten-fold in size. So we’re discharging much more sewage than ever before.

And our ‘chemical load’ in that wastewater is higher than ever.  Think pharmaceuticals, household detergents, anti-bacterial soaps and on and on. Some of it carcinogenic. Or endocrine-disrupting, fish-fertility-killing stuff.

The latest study, from the University of the Western Cape (which I’ve seen) shows our chemicals are massively bio-accumulating (building up) in Atlantic Seaboard marine life. Especially in mussels, which you might eat. (Hint for lovers of sea life: please use biodegradable detergents.)

The Cape Peninsula is a Protected Marine Reserve. So we’re pooing in our Reserve, if you’ll excuse my French. But the city denies that dumping sewage there is illegal. Fortunately, the Camps Bay Ratepayers sought senior legal counsel on this, and the latest opinion, I’ve been led to believe, states the opposite. So expect a legal battle.

The city also denies they are pumping raw sewage. They called it pre-treated, or something. But the science is clear. There are 4 stages of treatment. And the city only does Stage 0, which is screening for large objects (think tampons and nappies). That is called preliminary-treatment, something which happens before you properly chemically-treat anything. So to me and many others, our sewage effluent is ‘raw’. (And I have a BSc in Civil Engineering. I spent 2 of a 4 years course studying this stuff, literally.)

But does the city even always do Stage 0? Has anyone seen trucks lining up at the Camps Bay pumping station to remove the screened waste from the Olympic-pool-size quantities passing through? Some suspect all that happens there is maceration – grinding material into a pulp, then pumping it out.

The city often claims that since Sydney pumps sewage to sea,  it must be fine for us, too. Except … um… surely the city knows that Sydney DOESN’T pump out raw sewage? They screen it, like we do, then they treat it to stage 1 (primary treatment, sinking solids) and then to stage 2 (secondary, UV treatment).

And it goes out 3km, as opposed to around 700m from our Maiden’s Cove beach. And in Sydney, it goes into open seas, unlike ours which goes into our Table Bay, or much worse, into little Hout Bay.  And theirs is discharged at a depth of 60m, versus Camps Bay’s 30m.

And guess what? Sydney STILL has problems. I know this, because last week, I interviewed an oceanographer, who was once officially employed in Sydney to study the issue. So is our city perhaps intentionally misleading the public?

Our city also claims they test our sea-water regularly, so everything is fine. But I have good reason to believe their testing is inadequate. An award-winning public health expert explained it to me. That’ll be in the next video too.

And yes, at Camps Bay we have so-called ‘Blue Flag’ status. Except only half the beach is Blue Flag – because, by Blue Flag’s own rules, you can’t get certification with a pump-station on the beach. So does the city ever announce that Blue Flag covers only half the beach?

And the latest from WESSA, the wildlife society who are supposed to monitor the situation, is an admission that city-testing was ‘not fully independent and could be improved on’ in 2016. Will the city tell anyone? Um… probably not.

And the city says they employed the CSIR to do an independent sewage impact study. Which is true; they did employ the CSIR. But guess what? I don’t believe that report is fully independent. Because when I phoned the CSIR, they confirmed the city supplied much of the data for that report. Scandalous. And the city has thus far refused to release that report to the public, despite promising it in December last year.

But just think, if pumping sewage to sea was perfectly safe, then New York, for example, could shut its 26 (treatment) plants and just pump it to sea. The same for Barcelona and every coastal city worldwide. Billions of dollars would be saved. Except that would be nonsense.

Yet when I posed this conundrum to a top city official, I believe his response was:  yes, he would love to shut every plant in Cape Town and pump it all out to sea. Only the cost of pipes was holding him back. And this response was from an official in charge of treating sewage! It is ridiculous. This is what we’re dealing with.

I could go on. But you get the picture? Our city really, really doesn’t want to treat that sewage. But why are they so incredibly obstinate on this issue?

Is it a question of cost? How much would a treatment plant in Camps Bay or Hout Bay cost? (Bearing in mind the city gets close to R1m/month in sewage levies from Camps Bay alone, and it’s 40 years since they last built a pumping station there, so that’s R500m that should have been set aside…). How much would it cost to pump the 37Ml from Mouille Point to a proper treatment works, where that water could be recycled? Has the city bothered to get those figures?

And what about the losses when fewer tourists come to South Africa’s tourist golden-miles of Camps Bay and Hout Bay? Because yes, foreign tourists do actually care about this, er… poo.

I have another theory, though. Firstly, I believe our mayoral committee is obsessed with selling off public land, rather than preserving it for the public good.

Stories of our city siding with developers over ratepayers, and even fighting them in court, are frighteningly common. I won’t go on about it here. Scroll through Facebook.com/SaveCapeTown and read it there.

My point is, the people who run our city, seem intent on running it like a business. Are they trying to turn a cash profit, rather than run a public service for citizens? 

They certainly don’t seem to be listening to our engineers and planners often enough, or investing properly in infrastructure. Hence our water and sewage crises.

You see, it might be all the same issue – bad management. Suffer the people. Our city slogan used to be ‘This city works for you’. Clearly, that was no longer appropriate.

But is it more than just bad management? Let’s look specifically at Maiden’s Cove reserve, the only public space left in Camps Bay, on which we could build a primary-treatment plant, to take out 60% of sewage. Odourless and underground, they have such plants in cities like New York. But, oops! That land has just been sold.

Yes, since 2015, instead of putting all her energy into sewage and water, our mayor seems to have diverted large council resources into plotting the sale of Maiden’s Cove land. Why? And why was it suddenly sold last month?

Let’s speculate. Is it because the mayor is under huge pressure from the water crisis? And perhaps on her way out?

While we debate this, let’s please stop that sale. But let’s not take too long. Our sewage, which could be recycled, is still being pumped into our bays, killing-off our marine life, and surely floating back to shore.

Tribunal lashed

Camps Bay residents are considering legal action against the City of Cape Town’s Municipal Planning Tribunal.

This comes after a recent decision by the tribunal relating to title deeds on a property in the suburb.

The Camps Bay and Clifton Ratepayers’ Association (CBCRA) says there is a lack of transparency when it comes to decision-making by the tribunal.

This is not the first time a decision made by the tribunal, established in 2015, has been met with criticism.

CBCRA chair Chris Willemse said they had instructed the association’s legal team to consider the merits of bringing an application before the Western Cape High Court to review, and have set aside the decision.

Mr Willemse said the owner had applied to have the property rezoned from single residential, to allow multiple units to be built on the property. He did not want to divulge the address of the property.

“It is common cause among all civic groupings in Cape Town that the DA-led City panders to the development industry and that the relationship is certainly not in the interests of property owners and ratepayers in the city.”

Mr Willemse also accused the tribunal and the City of favouring big developers when it came to making decisions. “The City argues that it cannot control the influx of people into the city, which is true. However, the emphasis on allowing huge upmarket developments, which result in rich pickings for the development industry, only puts additional stress on the already strained supply system (water, roads etc) without really dealing with the actual housing problems on the ground.

“Of course, upmarket development is where the money is – so there one finds the politicians and their fellow travellers.”

Mr Willemse said that the title deed conditions of a property were considered as real rights and therefore could not be removed without due process or compensation.

Osman Shaboodien, chairperson of the Bo-Kaap Civic and Ratepayers’ Association, said he fully supported the actions taken by the CBCRA. He agreed with Mr Willemse that decisions made by the tribunal favoured developers rather than residents.

He added that the BKCRA had been before the tribunal three times recently and that all decisions had gone against the people of Cape Town. “The biggest challenge that we have with the tribunal is that it is a biased body. It is all about a push to further the coffers.”

Mr Shaboodien also suggested that the Public Protector investigate the tribunal. “All of the decisions were stacked against the people of Cape Town. It is time that the people of Cape Town stand together and take a stand.”

He said decisions needed to be made neutral and benefit all people in Cape Town and not just a wealthy minority.

Dave Daniels, chairperson of the Municipal Planning Tribunal, welcomed any action by the CBCRA, adding that the association was fully within its rights to challenge any decision of the tribunal – via an appeal, or if that fails, in a court of law. “I support such applications because these assist to ensure that the tribunal makes decisions that are not only fair, but also legally sound.”

Mr Daniels added that all objections into a matter bought before the tribunal were taken into account. “When the tribunal decides against an objection it does not mean that objections were not taken cognisance of.

“The tribunal has refused a number of applications based, among others, on the reasonableness of objections made against applications.”

The tribunal meets every Tuesday at 10am and meetings are open to the public. “Any member of the media and the public is welcome to attend the meetings and then judge for themselves whether we conduct our business in a fair manner.”

By

 MATTHEW HIRSCH

https://www.atlanticsun.co.za/news/tribunal-lashed-11807427

Battle for Clifton land continues

https://www.atlanticsun.co.za/news/battle-for-clifton-land-11550157

By

 MATTHEW HIRSCH

October 12, 2017

Residents and ratepayers are adamant that the battle for a piece of public land in Clifton, worth around R1 billion, is not over.

This comes after the City of Cape Town announced that the tender to develop on the site had been awarded last week.

The controversial tender for development on the prime public land was advertised in March last year after a series of public meetings.

The City said that according to the tender documents the bidder K2015298271 has two shareholders – Vunani Mion Properties Pty Ltd and Tobie Mynhardt Properties CC.

Brett Herron, Mayco committee member for transport and urban development, said that K2015298271 offered the highest bid. The second highest bid was from Maiden’s Cove Properties Limited (R766.5 million) while the third highest bid was submitted by Farlo Touch Edms
(R683 21 million). “The City of Cape Town advertised the tender for the development of the City-owned land between the Clifton bungalows and Camps Bay in March last year.”

Mr Herron also said that the City would use 10% of the financial offer – thus approximately R100 million – for affordable and inclusionary housing projects on well-located land in the inner-city. “We are in the process of auditing and assessing City-owned land that could be used for this purpose. We will be able to provide more details once we have identified suitable land parcel(s), needless to say these will be situated close to work and public transport.”

The City said the Immovable Property Adjudication Committee (IPAC) had awarded an approximately R1 billion tender for the development of the Clifton Precinct to K2015298271 South Africa (Pty) Ltd.

According to the City of Cape Town, development in the area would see an improvement on public space in the area which they say is currently degraded.

However, residents and ratepayers in the area disagree. Chris Willemse, chairman of the Camps Bay Ratepayers’ Association, criticised the public participation process. “It was always going to be announced,” he said.

Mr Willemse added that the matter would be discussed with the Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance to discuss the best way forward and whether to take legal action.

He also said that he was concerned that any development at Maiden’s Cove will mean it becomes an exclusive area. “This was one beach on the Atlantic Seaboard that wasn’t touched and it was wonderful. De Lille is selling prime City assets to her friends. It is going to be a long battle and we are not going to take this lying down. We will fight for the interests of the city as a whole,” added Mr Willemse.

Len Swimmer, deputy chairman of the Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance, also criticised the public participation process. “It was a sham and a farce,” said Mr Swimmer. “It is very, very frustrating.”

He added that the ratepayers’ comments weren’t taken into account by the City during the public participation phase. He added that further legal action was likely and the matter was on the agenda for the organisation’s next meeting on Saturday October 14.

Mark Jackson, who started the Save Cape Town group in response to the matter last year, said he felt disappointed with the outcome. “There are lots of questions that need to be raised and the timing of it seems quite strange,” he said.

Mr Jackson , also started a “Save Maiden’s Cove” petition last year, which has more than 2 000 signatures. “There is a pattern developing where the ratepayers are having to fight their own City council. The City is using ratepayers’ money against them in court and that seems absurd.”

He said the City also have said how issues such as traffic and sewage would be affected by the proposed development. “There is going to be a very strong push back against this and it is not over.”

Citing the stopping of commercialisation at Princess Vlei and the Sea Point Promenade in recent years, he added: “There is hope in people power.”

Clifton resident and former Constitutional Court judge, Albie Sachs, said the announcement about the successful bidder appeared to come out of the blue. “A lot of it seems to have been done back to front. There should have been environmental impact assessment and traffic reports done.The main concern relates to the lack of clarity in which it’s been done. It is a piece of public land of great scenic and historic significance that will be privatised.”

Judge Sachs stressed, again, that it was vital that Maiden’s Cover be protected. “Maiden’s Cove is so special in our history that it should have been the start of any programme and not an add on. It looks like the main thrust of the project is to build houses and a hotel.”

Meanwhile, activist organisation, Ndifuna Ukwazi, said that if Clifton Precinct is suitable for development, then it is suitable for the development of affordable housing.

In a statement, the organisation said: “We welcome the R100 million contribution to affordable and inclusionary housing projects and look forward to seeing the City immediately open a public participation process – this is entirely necessary. We want to see it being spent on new developments and not these most recent commitments for Woodstock, Salt River and the inner city. Instead, we want to see housing on the Atlantic Seaboard where workers in the area enjoy the same breathtaking views as their wealthier counterparts.”

Mr Herron said that the City had received eight tenders in total. “A thorough and rigorous supply chain management process was followed. This included a due diligence process conducted by external auditors. A statutory appeal period of 21 days is now under way, allowing those bidders who have been unsuccessful the right to appeal the outcome of the process.

“The City-owned land between the Clifton bungalows and Camps Bay is approximately 16ha in size, of which 5ha has now been made available to the successful bidder,” said Mr Herron.

He also said that claims that comments the City received during the public participation process weren’t taken into account were incorrect. “The draft plans were amended to take some of the concerns into account. The public will be provided with further opportunities to comment on the detail designs when the development application(s) are submitted. The planning processes and required statutory public participation for the development of the site will take place in accordance with the Municipal Planning By-law and Municipal Finance Management Act.”

Development at the site is set to include two pockets of single residential developments consisting of 52 residential stands, a boutique hotel or serviced apartment site consisting of 3 500 m², a commercial component (restaurants and retail) consisting of 5 000 m², a mixed-use component (offices, studios, apartments) consisting of 2 250 m² as well as an underground parking facility consisting of approximately 725 parking bays.

Mr Herron added: “The cost of the investment in the upgrading of existing public infrastructure and the construction of new public infrastructure will be funded by the City. The proposed development will rejuvenate the surrounding area; improve public access to the beach, ocean and recreational facilities; protect the natural vegetation; enhance local and international tourism potential; and unlock investment to drive job creation.”

The City added that the “planning processes and required statutory public participation for the development of the site will take place in accordance with the Municipal Planning By-law and Municipal Finance Management Act.”

Sea Rescue Station damaged in storm

Stormy seas at Three Anchor Bay last week.

The NSRI Bakoven sea rescue station suffered extensive damages during the storm last week.

The rescue station was flooded and an electrical box caught alight, causing fire damage last Wednesday, June 7.

Most of the equipment and the sea rescue boat Rotarian Schipper had been moved to safety the day before in preparation for the storm.

Craig Lambinon, spokesman for the NSRI, said the base would require expensive repair work.

The NSRI said on the same day a woman was trapped on the rocks in the tidal pool at Camps Bay.

Mr Lambinon said the woman had been sitting on the rocks for some time and was stranded when the high tide came in.

She was helped to safety by bystanders and treated by Community Medics paramedics and by ER24 ambulance services. She was then taken to the police station until her family could be reached.

The storm also damaged 135 schools across the province.

MEC for Education in the Western Cape, Debbie Schäfer said they
would fix minor damages as soon as possible.

Public schools across the province were closed last Wednesday in anticipation of the storm which was expected to be the worst in 30 years. Winds of up to 90km an hour were predicted along with much needed rain in the drought-ravaged Western Cape.

In Lavender Hill, 69-year-old Joseph Conning died when part of his neighbour’s unfinished double-storey house fell on him.

Mr Conning was standing in the kitchen of his wendy house.

Mr Conning’s nephew Jody Africa, 19, was with him in the wendy house and sustained head injuries.

The family, however, said they don’t harbour any resentment towards the neighbour Chrisandro Dirks, a shoemaker, who was periodically building the double-storey house as money came in.

“We started about four years ago and we were in the process of building two bedrooms. What happened is such a tragedy because Uncle Joe was my friend. We spoke every morning and I am very sad that he died the way he did,” said Mr Dirks.

By

 MATTHEW HIRSCH

 June 15, 2017

The DA should take responsibility for Water Crisis

South Africans have been a little obsessed with the weather lately, and for good reason. We've been experiencing a drought for the past two years. But while Gauteng seems to be in the clear (for now) – the Vaal Dam is filled to capacity – following the abundance of rainfall over the past couple of weeks, the Western Cape – and the City of Cape Town in particular – remains thirsty.

In the Western Cape, dam levels are sitting at 31%, havingdropped by 1.6% in one week. With the rainy season far away and only 120 days of water left, the situation in Cape Town looks dire.  Since October last year, there have been strict water restrictions where metros across the country. To date, Cape Town has not adhered to its target of using 700 million litres per day. The city’s current usage is 837 million litres per day.

It's important to look at the situation critically and ask if it could have been managed better to mitigate its effects because the worst thing about the impending water crisis is that the poor will suffer the most.

Naming and shaming campaign backfires

One of the actions taken to address the water crisis in Cape Town was a name and shame campaign. The DA-run City of Cape Town revealed the top 100 water guzzlers on Monday. In the top 10, is a number of wealthy areas like Constantia, Bishop's Court, and Tokai. These are likely people who have sprawling lawns and big, blue swimming pools to fill with the earth's most precious resource.

Upon further investigation, it appeared that some of the consumers on the list had serious leakages. The number one consumer of water in Crawford was billed for over 700 000 litres in a month. That amount of water is enough to fill 10 average-sized swimming pools. It was revealed that two elderly people lived in this residence which had neither a garden nor a pool. Instead, a water pipe had burst last month and this reflected on the bill.

So the top water user in Cape Town has an underground leak? And our water department didn’t pick that up? @CityofCT is incompetent

Yonique Morta (@yonique_morta) March 1, 2017

But second on the list was a location in Manenberg – one of Cape Town's poorer communities. Manenberg has no sprawling lawns or pools either. What Manenberg does have is leaking pipes. The resident who lived at the address, Martha Thuysma, 64, told The Daily Voice that her water meter is so faulty she turns her water off to stop her house from flooding.

Sasol's manager of sustainable water, Andries Meyer, said local municipalities are losing almost half of their water in leakages because their infrastructure is old and badly maintained. This means that water losses are as high as 30% to 60%.

In his radio show on Thursday, Heart FM radio presenter Aden Thomas criticised the name-and-shame campaign as œdisingenuous. He said the list did not provide water consumers with any context – what the normal level of consumption is or even action taken by authorities to correct the situation. Thomas said he was disappointed with the City's response because he feels that they should have gone above and beyond. He questioned whether it had done everything, whether it had prioritised the accounts of those who had been using exorbitant amounts of water.

Why so slow to fix the problems?

There should be greater urgency in dealing with the matter. Even if it was just one leak, considering that it is impossible to manufacture water, it needs to be prioritised and dealt with. Apart from the situation falling on the shoulders of Mother Nature, there is a service delivery issue here. Worse is that the poor will suffer – and that is just symptomatic of ongoing DA policy.

Capetonians are recycling their bathwater and using it to top up their toilet systems, water their pot plants or their gardens. Has the City taken into account how abnormal the situation is and done everything to address it?

According to a report by EWN, municipal officers are engaging with Cape Town's top water users. According to the City of Cape Town, none of the residents had reported any water leakages. But that excuse simply is not good enough. When data shows that a single residence is using enough water to fill up to ten swimming pools, the City needs to take the issue more seriously. Regional head at the Water and Sanitation Department, Rashid Khan, was also baffled by the City's approach. It cost a lot of money to reduce wastage, but it doesn't take away from the manager’s going to water users to find out what's going on, he said.

What's worse is that the DA is always bragging about how well-run their metros are. In their vision, they say, Where we govern, we have delivered the country's best performance scores in education, health, service delivery and clean governance.

Pull yourself together, City of Cape Town

This speaks to how the DA runs the Cape Town metro in general. The party's past actions would suggest that it prioritises the needs of the rich over the needs of the poor. We see that with the gentrification of spaces like Woodstock, Observatory, Salt River, and Zonnebloem, where poor folk are evicted to create larney spaces for the rich to sip on superfood smoothies and buy artisan bread. It's similar with the Cape Town deployment of police; there is a greater police presence in Camps Bay than in Nyanga and Khayelitsha.

It is imperative that the City of Cape Town does more to address the water crisis. Who is going to suffer when the water runs out? While the rich will be rushing to the nearest Woolworths to get a five-litre bottle of water, it is the poor that will remain landless – and now waterless.

 Featured image via Pixabay

By 

Shaazia Ebrahim
https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/the-da-should-take-responsibility-for-cape-towns-water-crisis-shaazia-ebrahim/

Improve traffic in Camps Bay

Al Fresco Dining overlooking Camps Bay Beach.

For many years now, I have thought that Camps Bay beachfront area is in a steady state of slow decline, notwithstanding some of the initiatives of continuous improvement a paradox, indeed.

I commute twice daily through Camps Bay, stopping for coffees in the morning, and eating at a Camps Bay restaurant two or three times a week on the way home.

The sidewalk vendors, selling curios and ice creams are a definite plus for the vibe, especially as far as tourists are concerned. However, the vendors cars – six on average measured on four consecutive days – are parked alongside the vendors’ display area, blocking off a potential parking bay for 12 plus hours every day.

The cars are no doubt used to transport the wares to/from the sidewalk area, but why not then enforce the parking of cars behind the sports fields, and they can then return to load the stock later?

On another tack, I have a suggestion for traffic flow improvement, and for a minor change to MyCiTi bus stop locations.

In the past 10 years or so, I have noticed an exponential hindrance in traffic flow; originally in the “high peak” summer months, but now it seems way more year-around.

The MyCiTi buses do an excellent job, yet there are incremental improvements they could make to minimise traffic hindrance.

I am an unabashed fan of the MyCiTi bus service; I have blogged “live” from a bus for a group of cyclists and motorbikes, following the launch of MyCiTi, have commuted to/from work with it on 30 or 40 occasions, have transported a bicycle – by necessity – on the bus outside of peak hours (brilliant), and think very highly of the service indeed. Well done Cape Town – a real asset to the City of Cape Town.

There are, however, some minor improvements which could, in my opinion, make a major difference to the smooth running of the service. MyCiTi opted for the “in-traffic” stop method, whereby the bus does not pull off the road, but stops in the traffic flow, loads/unloads passengers, and then continues on its way. This method prevents the buses having to re-enter traffic flow, and thus be held hostage by impatient car drivers not letting the bus back in.

The problem it causes is that another MyCiTi bus is being forced over the double white line in order to pass another bus.

The sheer number of buses waiting to collect passengers (enforced waiting for scheduling purposes) puts a lot of load of the traffic infrastructure, and significantly adds to congestion. Buses with a 5 to 10 minute wait at a stop – say Camps Bay – will idle for those 5 to 10 minutes, doors open; even in cooler, winter conditions. Could the bus engine not be switched off to mitigate unnecessary pollution? This is my experience while onboard the bus, not as an observer.

Again, in Camps Bay, they have situated a bus stop (Glen Beach) on a narrow, curving part of Victoria Road, when just 10 metres earlier, sufficient space exists for the bus stop – this would enable cars to still pass the bus when it “pulls in”, but is way safer than the existing situation of a bus stop on curved road after a 1km straight.

The bus stop at Bakoven outbound from Cape Town, is again, situated on a fairly dangerous bend and, paradoxically, there is a bus stop/turning area immediately behind this bus stop; I would seriously recommend MyCiTi to re-examine using the same bus top, but facing east instead of west, in other words, using an existing, safe, out-of-the- traffic bus stop, to enable the free flow of traffic. Motorists will allow the MyCiTi bus back into the flow of traffic – that is how much goodwill exists for this service.

I’m keen to hear MyCiTi’s management views on this; hopefully a thorough analysis, rather than “we thought of that, but it won’t work ”

Like Venice Beach and others, Camps Bay is becoming such a must-see destination, but it’s like the road along the beach – Victoria Drive – cannot cope.

I do think it would be worth doing a feasibility study of having an underpass (tunnel), allowing the following:

Emergency vehicles, pedestrians, would all have unfettered access across a paved-over surface where the existing road is situated.

One-way traffic would pass underneath this road – a massive undertaking, for sure, but nothing like on the scale of say Boston, Massachusetts.

It could be beneficial to have the opposing traffic routed behind Main Road, on existing infrastructure.

Just envision the entire existing road along the beach-front being pedestrianised, with people strolling about, and the restaurants/ hotels no longer separated from the beachfront by a never-ending stream of traffic.

Delivery vehicles would still have access. All other non-emergency vehicles would go underground. And Camps Bay would lose its worsening traffic congestion.

By Atlantic Sun
https://www.atlanticsun.co.za/news/improve-traffic-in-camps-bay-7991036