Overgrown trees a traffic hazard, say residents
Trees growing around street lights at several Table View intersections are reducing night-time visibility and could cause accidents, say residents.
The corner of Wood Drive and Blaauwberg Road is notorious for car crashes and residents say the overgrown trees could be partly to blame.
Resident Greg Dancer said lighting had been poor at the intersection for several years.
“It’s been over four years we’ve had this issue here. And a few weeks ago, they fixed it, but now we have these trees growing again and damaging the lights,” he said.
“At the corner of Wood Drive and Blaauwberg, near the parking lot of the church, there’s a broken street light. It was caused by the tree branches bashing into it because of winds. Something needs to be done because this is dangerous. There are many other examples of this in the neighbourhood: trees covering the lights which could cause major traffic problems,” he said.
Near the parking lot in question, the head of the street light fell on the paving area and some residents say this could have easily fallen onto a car or a pedestrian.
Nikita Prim, of Table View, said there were also overgrown trees on Raats Drive.
"This is another accident waiting to happen. When you have branches blocking the view of lights and sometimes having to swerve because they are encroaching on the roads. When there are big storms, conditions are worse because big branches are ripped and they fly into the roads. We hope the City could have people maintaining them on a regular basis,“ she said.
Ward 113 councillor Joy Solomon said she hadn’t heard about trees blocking street lights or the damage to a street light but there were some overgrown trees in the neighbourhood that need to be trimmed.
“I’m wary of calling people to trim these trees though because often we have young people or people who are not well trained and they sometimes hack large chunks of the trees or simply don’t do a very good job with the trimming. Sometimes they don’t use the equipment safely and this just makes the situation dangerous.”
She said she would approach the recreation and parks department to find a solution.
Phindile Maxiti, mayoral committee member for energy and climate change, said repairs to single lights were usually done within days of the fault being reported.
By Tuesday the light had been fixed. However, a tree was still pressed up against it.
The recreation and parks department did not respond to questions by time of publication.
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