Road hazard

* Our sister paper, The CapeTowner spotted a potentially dangerous situation on the corner of Strand Street and St George’s Mall, outside the Cape Sun hotel on Friday, March11. A fence had been erected on the pavement, leaving little room for pedestrians walking on Strand Street. When this picture was taken, shortly before 4pm, there were a number of commuters making their way to the stations in that direction, forcing some people to walk on the red line. They could easily have been knocked down by oncoming traffic. In this picture, the white taxi is stationary, picking up passengers for Sea Point. So cars passed the taxi and then veered in front of it and could so easily have knocked over some of the people walking in the road. We asked the City of Cape Town, who erected the fence, if they had permission to do so and when it would come down. Councillor Johan van der Merwe, mayoral committee member for energy, environmental and spatial planning, said on Tuesday: “A City of Cape Town building inspector has conducted a site visit and, after consultation with the site foreman, found that the protective fence was temporarily moved close to the road due to a glass panel that crashed to the ground because of excessive wind. The panel has now been fixed and the fence is back in the correct position, giving the pedestrians a 1.5 m walkway.”