That's a road with some serious futureproofing! The original intention seems to be that the S4 would ultimately be one carriageway of a dual 3 setup with hard shoulders, but if the new carriageway is only D2, the upgrade surely wasn't about capacity. Was it a safety upgrade?booshank wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 23:56 Streetview also answers a question I was thinking of: how would they upgrade the S4 rural main roads that are quite common in South Africa? It seems the solution is simple, turn the original road into a three lane carriageway and build a new two lane carriageway alongside.
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Chris
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Re: Streetview South Africa
I somehow doubt the original intention was D3, as that would be pretty unusual for a rural (rather than suburban or urban) road in South Africa - traffic volumes simply don't require it. So I'm thinking it was originally built/planned to be S2 with wide shoulders or S2+1 which could be turned into one carriageway of a D2. But for some reason they scrimped on an upgrade and built S4, despite or before SANRAL's findings that S4 has few savings compared with D2 and a lot of disadvantages.Chris5156 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 09:01That's a road with some serious futureproofing! The original intention seems to be that the S4 would ultimately be one carriageway of a dual 3 setup with hard shoulders, but if the new carriageway is only D2, the upgrade surely wasn't about capacity. Was it a safety upgrade?booshank wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 23:56 Streetview also answers a question I was thinking of: how would they upgrade the S4 rural main roads that are quite common in South Africa? It seems the solution is simple, turn the original road into a three lane carriageway and build a new two lane carriageway alongside.
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Re: Streetview South Africa
We really need to go back to when the road was first built. From what I recall, the road was probalby originally built during the Apartheid era as a S2 with very wide shoulders (to take donkey carts, cyclists, pedestrians etc). The norm would be that if somebody wished to overtake you, you would move onto the hard shoulder and allow them to do so. My guess is that the cost of building an S2 with a wide hard shoulder was much less than the cost of building an S4. If there was an insurrection, then the army could comandeer the hard shoulder for the period of the insurrection. As traffic increased, the hard shoulder was rebuilt as a proper road. It was then decided to convert the S4 into a D2 and restore the hard shoulder to the donkey carts etc. The new bridges were built first. What you saw was a newly built bridge. Once the bridges were in place, the new road was built.Chris5156 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 09:01That's a road with some serious futureproofing! The original intention seems to be that the S4 would ultimately be one carriageway of a dual 3 setup with hard shoulders, but if the new carriageway is only D2, the upgrade surely wasn't about capacity. Was it a safety upgrade?booshank wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 23:56 Streetview also answers a question I was thinking of: how would they upgrade the S4 rural main roads that are quite common in South Africa? It seems the solution is simple, turn the original road into a three lane carriageway and build a new two lane carriageway alongside.
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Re: Streetview South Africa
There was a section in an episode of Abandoned Engineering about this.booshank wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2013 19:27Do you mean this one?
I think the Cape Town one was built on a more ambitious scale but I'm guessing the same era (construction was halted in the mid-70s). It's more apparent at the stumps at the other end for the unbuilt mainline, note the massive carriageway separation used as a carpark.
Personally I think the brutalist structures go very well with the dramatic natural setting, but others disagree! South African freeway designs seem to achieve a special degree of brutalism that you rarely see here - I think maybe it's the concrete parapets rather than the typical British steel railings.
It seems that they'll never be completed as intended.