Tours in Cape Town

Posts Tagged ‘Eastern Boulevard’

The Cape Town Stadium with people queuing to get in at the bottom right of the picture

Today  22nd March 2010  was a public holiday in South Africa and a church group “Yaahweh Nissi “staged a large event at the Cape Town Stadium.

The event was expected to draw a crowd of 60000 people. This meant that the top tier in the stadium would also be used to accommodate the largest crowd so far housed in the stadium in one event.

It however appears that a crowd of about 50000 eventually arrived for the event.

Cars parking on the sportsfields to the west of the stadium. No buses parked anywhere in the vicinity of the stadium

From my vantage point on Signal Hill a number of hours before the event was expected to start everything seemed very orderly outside the stadium with cars parked on open ground parking around the stadium in neat rows.

At the new raised traffic circle near the stadium shuttle buses were allowed to turn right  into Granger Road and to  drop off passengers on the east side of the stadium while cars were directed to carry on along the Western Boulevard to the west where they no doubt had parking arranged for themselves.  The shuttle buses after dropping their passengers then made their way down Granger Road and  back to the Western Boulevard via Beach Road  and Portswood Road.

This seemed to work smoothly as the buses were all moving in the same direction and there was no one trying to turn a vehicle around in a cramped space.

Cars being forced westwards past the stadium while shuttle buses were allowed down the east side of the stadium to drop off passengers

Although traffic seemed to be moving smoothly there was still a build up of traffic on the approach roads to the city.

The N1 coming in from the northern suburbs along Table Bay Boulevard was backed up to the start of the elevated freeway on the N1. The traffic coming in along Eastern boulevard was also backed up from the merge on the Eastern Boulevard with the N1 on the raised bridges.

The N1 in the background and the Eastern Boulevard on top of the raised bridges were backed up with traffic.

Traffic on the Western Boulevard was backed up from the intersection of Coen Steytler and Buitengracht Street to the new raised circle just outside the stadium. From what I can make out the shuttle buses were sent into the same traffic backlog on the Western Boulevard as motorists had to contend with and had no special rights such as bus lanes that they could travel on.

I might be wrong because I am going by what I saw from Signal Hill, but shuttle buses were defintely on the Western Boulevard moving westwards. ( See photo below)

Slow moving traffic on Western Boulevard approaching the traffic circle at the Cape Town Stadium

The Western Cape  is at present building a rapid bus transport system throughout the city and I was actually taken aback to see that there was not a dedicated buslane for the shuttle buses going to the stadium.

From radio and press reports it appears that about 10000 people made use of the shuttle bus park and ride system. A total of 143 round trips were made by the  shuttle buses moving about 70 passengers per bus per trip.

The V & A Waterfront also backed up with traffic trying to reach the stadium

When traffic is slow in Cape Town commuters always look for alternative routes to get to their destinations. Today the shortcut was through the V & A Waterfront and you can see from the photo above what happened.

All in all traffic authorities and the  Cape Town  Stadium was happy with went on in the traffic.   Were you?  Your traffic suggestions to improve the system might also be appreciated.

Place your comments in the space provided below.

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