48 firms sign up to help Joburg keep traffic lights on during power cuts

When the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) launched its Traffic Signal Backup Power Initiative (TSBPI) six months ago, the entity conservatively aimed to keep 35 intersections on during load-shedding within a year.

Now more than 100 intersections have an uninterrupted power supply and more than 40 businesses have joined in to assist the effort by sharing their backup power for traffic lights during load-shedding.

JRA is responsible for 2,020 intersections across the city.

The initiative was launched in July 2023 as part of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) Strategy 2027. This saw the entity “join forces with corporate giants to fight the effects of load-shedding”. Vodacom was among the first to sign up and was joined by major banks, Momentum, Santam, Growthpoint, Sasol and Netcare, to name a few. 

“Since the inception of the initiative, JRA has partnered with more than 40 companies to provide traffic signals in the vicinities in question with power from their reserves during load-shedding and power outages.

“The partnering companies assist by providing a power uptake that ranges between 550 watt/hour to 1,500 watt/hour at the most complex intersections. The partnerships have since gone on to assist with traffic movement across the city’s roads network,” the entity said at the time. 

Acting head of the mobility and freight department, Sipho Nhlapo, said the initiative was going very well and explained it had come as a result of Eskom's gloomy prediction that it may only be able to return a stable supply of power by 2035.

“When we came up with the idea, it was after listening to what Eskom was telling us, that] it might take them years to get the power back [to normal]. We realised we needed to do something.

“When we went out to the market, we were very conservative with our intention. We thought by the end of the financial year we would have done about 35 intersections. However, to date we've done 120 so it has moved beyond our plans. The response was far more than we expected,” he told TimesLIVE. 

Most of the intersections are located in Sandton, Rosebank and Midrand, which are home to many big businesses and operate with backup power.

Speaking about Sandton specifically, Nhlapo said 95% of intersections have been taken off the grid since the initiative was launched.

“The simple reason is money circulates there so it's easier for them to engage in something like this. Most of the buildings there already have backup power linked to the building,” he said.

In the inner-city, two major banks have signed on to assist with intersections close to their businesses.

Standard Bank is assisting with intersections located next to its building and all the way to the M2 while FNB did the same for 13 intersections close to its operations, including those on Pixley kaSeme and Simmonds streets.

In Soweto, MTN has signed on to help with an intersection, Nhlapo said.

“I know before we closed in December we had a request from Makro in Fordsburg to get into an arrangement with us. I'm happy it's coming into the inner-city and Fordsburg,” he said.

Nhlapo told TimesLIVE 48 service-level agreements had been signed so far and these were for three years.

The company and JRA incur their own cost in terms of connection. The company pays to bring the connection to the border of its building while JRA pays to take it all the way to the affected traffic light. The cost to do this depends on how far away the backup power source is from the intersection. The cost can range from a few rand to about R500,000.

Despite the success of the initiative so far, the ultimate goal, Nhlapo said, was to take all the traffic lights off-grid and maintain a constant supply of power for them.

He said: “Traffic lights can be far smarter than they are today. But for them to 'learn', they require consistent power supply so they can learn the behaviour of motorists on the road.

“For example, you've seen a situation where you approach a traffic light and it's closed on your side but there's no car moving [from the other side]. The intelligence is there to make sure it can pick up that you're there and can give you way, but machines have to learn. With poor supply of power to traffic lights, it's difficult for us to deploy these kinds of intelligent systems because the power is often out.”

TimesLIVE