Milnerton Nissan has come under fire from residents for using a service road in front of the dealership as a makeshift parking lot.
While traffic authorities say the company is doing nothing wrong, residents say the parked cars in narrow Masson Road are a danger.
Tygerhof Neighbourhood Watch member Lianne Lippert said Nissan had been using the road for years as a parking lot, turning what should be a two-way road into a dangerous one-way road.
“The vehicles parked all along the road cause a danger as drivers trying to use that narrow road can’t see other vehicles coming in the other direction. It also means that drivers can’t pass each other and one vehicle has to reverse back to where they came from to allow oncoming traffic to get through,” said Ms Lippert.
Things had gotten worse, she said, after a small strip of parking along Koeberg Road had been turned into a MyCiTi bus lane and now there was nowhere else to park the many vehicles waiting for Nissan’s attention.
Tygerhof resident Le Roux van Rensburg echoed Ms Lippert’s concerns.
“I am worried that a serious accident will happen there, and I feel like it would be something that could be avoided. I have seen that Nissan parks some of their cars at De Grendel School and also on the yellow line across the road on Koeberg Road,” said Mr Van Rensburg.
Ward 55 councillor Fabian Ah-Sing said he planned to meet with a traffic department official to discuss the matter and “find a suitable solution”.
But the City’s Traffic Services spokeswoman Maxine Bezuidenhout said nothing in the traffic law stopped Nissan’s customers parking in Masson Road.
The National Road Traffic Act, she said, prohibited parking in a road less than 5.5m wide, unless it was a one-way, but Masson Road was 7m wide.
“There are no road signs or road markings preventing vehicles from parking on this road,” she said.
Traffic police could not take action against the vehicles in the road unless they were committing an offence such as parking facing oncoming traffic, parking on the pavement or parking 5m from a stop sign or intersection.
Nevertheless, Milnerton Nissan regional manager Tommie Hamman told Tabletalk their customers would soon no longer need to park in Masson Road.
“We are applying for off-street parking for our customers so that we ease the traffic on the road. By the end of this year, the concerns that have been raised by residents should be a thing of the past,” said Mr Hamman.
He said Nissan had also bought two properties behind the dealership where more parking would be built.
