There was much bellyaching in Durban yesterday. Protesters blockaded N2 highway off-ramps around Riverhorse with burning tyres for most of the day, unleashing majestic traffic snarl-ups.Blocking the city's northern corridor is like instant artery clog. Alternative routes choked up in minutes and motorists spent hours on trips that ordinarily take 15 minutes. Most people won't give a jot but it was a protest about the lack of free houses.Until recently, Durbanites prided themselves on living in a city seldom strangled by traffic.But something's obviously up in the north of eThekwini because we're doing bumper-to-bumper more often.And it's not as though infrastructural upgrades aren't happening.Two interchanges on the N2, to service the northern corridor, are well into construction at a cost of about R1.6-billion. The Mount Edgecombe and Umgeni Road interchanges look likely to dwarf nearby Spaghetti Junction.They're monsters, with huge bridges that cross chasms and are part of a city-wide network of 9462km of road to service 750000 commuters daily.Sitting in traffic yesterday got me thinking about chats I've had with Carlos Esteves, Durban's deputy head of road systems management, and Logan Moodley, the city's deputy head of strategic transport planning.Esteves once told me that the city was running out of space for new roads and the interchanges are the last big upgrade before we implement Go Durban, the much vaunted R20-billion overhaul of the city's transit system.There's been a lot of noise about this initiative but I'm really not sure what to make of it. I believe we are going to get dedicated bus lanes and the 13 000 taxis that irritate the hell out of us are somehow going to feed into this grand new system.Moodley told me there would be a new fleet of buses, 500 railway coaches, 25 new railway stations, park-and-ride facilities and nifty integration with bicycle tracks.Oh yes, and it will be a cashless commuter system. Bring it on, I thought, until I unleashed the wizardry of Google.According to a much-cited study by Global Infrastructure Basel, a Swiss foundation, cities will swell by 2050 to accommodate 70% of the world's population, and 75% of the infrastructure that will be in place then doesn't exist today.If we want happy, prosperous people in Durban who can enjoy the city's fantastic lifestyle then I reckon we've got to accelerate Go Durban, pronto.But we've also got to jack up broadband connectivity and come up with other innovations to decentralise the city. We need more productive people and fewer dudes stuck in traffic en route to the larney areas around Durban North to earn a buck every day...