Montague Drive work nears completion
Detours and traffic congestion are coming to an end on Montague Drive after months of repairs.
It’s been almost a year since two sinkholes opened in the road within weeks of each other - the first one appeared on Monday August 21 and the second, about 60 metres away, on Thursday September 14, swallowed a bus stop (“Two sinkholes in three weeks on Montague Drive,” Tabletalk, September 20, 2023).
At the time, City officials were confident that the repairs wouldn’t take more than six weeks, but 10 more sinkholes - the latest in January this year - and months of repairs were to follow.
The collapses happened at multiple points along the 50-year-old, 900mm fibre-cement bulk sewer pipeline, which runs five metres under the road.
According to Zahid Badroodien, mayoral committee member for water and sanitation, a City contractor, appointed after the first collapse, finished emergency repairs to the sewage pipe in January.
“Road reinstatement was the last phase needed to call the project to a close,” he said, adding that the reinstatements had started earlier than anticipated.
“The City budgeted approximately R2.5 million for the reinstatement phase of this major/multiple repair. We share the frustration of the residents and business owners and thank them for their patience during this process. Every effort is being made to open at least one lane in the southbound carriageway as soon as possible. City teams will monitor the progress of the road reinstatements very closely until the work has been completed,” he said.
Teams had worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week to speed up repairs on the collapsed sewage pipeline, he said.
While those efforts had led to traffic congestion and detours for motorists, the last leg of the project was due to be completed by mid to late June, he said.
Sam Jonga, a Summer Greens resident who works near Killarney Gardens, said the months-long repairs had been a big inconvenience, but he was grateful that they had been done.
“I’m a taxpayer and I appreciate that the money I pay to the government gets used to fix our infrastructure. However, what I don’t appreciate is that our leaders wait for something terrible to happen before they get up and do something.
“I’m pretty sure that regular checks are done at major infrastructure points throughout the City, and someone should have noticed that there was a risk of this kind of thing happening... We need our leaders to be more proactive,” he said.
