Have you ever turned into a street and not known which way to go because you didn’t know the direction of the street numbers?
Well that will soon be a thing of the past as street signs in the Cape Town city centre will now include building numbers to help pedestrians and drivers find their destinations. Cape Town will be the first city in the country to feature this international practice, and it is hoped that it will result in people saving time and fuel as they will no longer need to turn around and backtrack in order to find the right address.
The new signs, which are being rolled out across the CBD, will also correlate with the area’s Geographic Information System (GIS) map.
This forms part of a R300 000 improvement to streets in the central business district, which also includes the provision of more than 130 new parking bays for motorcycles and 35 parking bays for the disabled. These extra motorcycle parking bays will assist the increasing number of people using motorcycles to travel into the city in order to save on fuel costs and reduce their carbon footprint, while the new disabled parking bays are easily accessible and strategically located.
The upgrade is a joint initiative between the City of Cape Town and the Central City Improvement District (CCID), which conducted the preliminary research that identified the need for the extra parking bays and the street numbering on signs.
Researchers had to identify the direction of street numbers at more than 200 intersections in the city centre, and also faced the challenge of allocating the sequence of numbers on the sign posts as the numbers are not always synchronised from one side of the road to the other. They also had to factor in the odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the road.
Bree Street, Loop Street and Long Street already have signs with sequenced numbering, and the project is expected to be completed in 2014.
“We are committed to ensuring that the Cape Town CBD remains a quality environment for visitors, businesses and residents. Projects such as ensuring sufficient parking bays for the disabled truly illustrate the City’s caring and inclusive ethos,” says Councillor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee Member: Transport for Cape Town.
Images by Roy McKenzie.
