Le Roux van Rensburg, Tijgerhof
The north pavement side of De Grendel Road,which was recently tarred for pedestrian traffic and where concrete bollards were erected to stop Shoprite delivery trucks from parking, is not now and has not in the past been used by pedestrian traffic (“Delivery vehicle congestion”, Tabletalk Letters, December 13).
Pedestrian traffic almost exclusively uses the south pavement of De Grendel Road.
This issue is not a question of condoning pavement parking, although Shoprite delivery trucks have used the north pavement side for parking for many years in the past.
This issue is about making the best of a bad situation, so that motorists can use De Grendel Road freely as they also have done for many years and so that residents on the south side of De Grendel Road can live more peaceful lives without truck engines and truck chiller equipment noise not directly in their faces.
Also, idling truck exhaust fumes pass into homes on the south side of De Grendel Road. If the trucks park on the north side of De Grendel Road, on the now tarred and bollarded pavement, at least the trucks are a further 10 or so metres away from the homes on the south side of De Grendel Road.
The other big plus is that traffic flow will be much easier in De Grendel Road when trucks park on the pavement on the north side of De Grendel Road.
Shoprite truck traffic has not significantly increased, as indicated by Mr Fordyce. It just seems so, as the trucks now just simply park in the road, as there is nowhere else for them to park.
The concrete bollards are the issue: trucks cannot park there because of the bollards.
As I have mentioned before, if a traffic impact study was done (which I very much doubt), to determine what the impact of installing the bollards would be, it would surely have highlighted the glaring fact that the trucks have nowhere else to park while waiting to off-load.
The trucks will not simply disappear into thin air because the bollards are now there.
Also, the alternative truck-parking plans that Mr Fordyce, Shoprite and the City of Cape Town have mentioned (parking either on Koeberg Road side of Shoprite or in the Shoprite customer parking lot) will either never materialise or will be discussed forever and a day and nothing will materialise.
Meanwhile, traffic on De Grendel Road remains severely disrupted, noise and exhaust fumes plague homes on the south side of De Grendel Road, tempers flare and accident near-misses continue.
I understand that Shoprite trucks must unload. My argument is not with the off-loading trucks.
My argument is with the bollards installed by the City. The bollards must go.
