I was listening to a streaming radio station from Johannesburg the other week, when they were going through the morning traffic report. Over 90% of the traffic tie-ups they mentioned were due to traffic lights not working.
When I read this article, some of that fell into place:
So are a few hooligans like this responsible for the vast majority of traffic problems in Johannesburg, or are traffic signals and/or electricity just woefully unreliable there?
Not from Johannesburg, but have lived there in the past…
Electricity cable theft (for the copper) is a chronic problem in Jo’burg. Traffic signals have exposed cabling, so that can be a factor. I don’t think this particular case is typical, though. Electricity and signals in general are very reliable, and Joburg is a big city, so the number of incidents may seem large, but they average out.
Generally, people in Jo’burg are aggressive drivers, so bad signals do lead to pileups.
Us Capetonians are more inclined to give the *other *traffic stream the right of way.
Once again, a more Capetonian perspective. I didn’t really see any more or less instances of traffic lights not working in Cape Town than here in Florida. By this I mean where the entire intersection was down. I did see far more instances of bulbs been burnt out (almost always not a problem since there are redundant lights), which I think is due to LED lights being more common in Florida (and I presume elsewhere in the US).