The 22km gravel road forms part of the Eastern Cape’s Department of Roads and Public Works “Surfacing of Low Volume Roads” strategy. “The strategy is to surface (tar) 80% of the gravel roads in the Province over a 10-year period,” explains Anton Westerberg, an engineer with Engineering Advice & Services, which is a consultant to the department and which has overseen the Nieu Bethesda road project.It will be a large and costly task, considering that the Eastern Cape has 38 400km of gravel roads. Only 5 200km in the province are currently tarred.
Low volume roads cost about R1,2-million/km to upgrade to an appropriate standard. High volume national roads cost R6 million/km to R10 million/km.The province is also reclassifying its roads according to traffic volumes, because traffic patterns have shifted. Some minor roads now have high volumes of traffic, while some major roads have very low volumes, said Westerberg.
The Nieu Bethesda road received the go-ahead for tarring a year ago. Westerberg explains that it was scheduled to be regravelled at a cost of R5 million but this was diverted to tarring instead. The Nieu Bethesda road was also identified as part of the Camdeboo Local Municipality’s Infrastructure Development Plan (IDP) , which earmarked it as a tourism route. The consultation process included the Project Steering Committee of the Camdeboo Area-wide Roads Maintenance Project, which includes farmers in the road’s vicinity as well as representatives from Camdeboo Municipality.
The first 5km were tarred last year but tarring couldn’t continued until the additional R21-million required to complete the road was made available earlier this year. The tarring is being jointly completed by contractors, Irhafu Louis Nel Joint Venture and the Department of Roads and Public Works.“It makes a huge amount of sense to tar roads like this, because in heavier traffic areas, you need to regravel every three to five years,” said Westerberg.
“The roads with less traffic in the Karoo require regraveling every five to eight years.”He explains that if roads aren’t regravelled in time they become undriveable and the road structure is lost and has to be reconstructed. The same applies to tar roads if they aren’t resealed at seven-year intervals. “Water gets into them and deterioration is rapid,” he explains.
