The City of Windhoek is blaming poor road conditions on the Road Fund Administration (RFA), saying it has received less than 10% of the money needed to maintain the roads over the past five years.
The RFA says it gave the city almost N$1 billion for “road infrastructure and traffic law enforcement initiatives” for the past three years.
City chief executive Moses Matyayi told The Namibian on Wednesday that the city does not charge road users for using roads, and it relies on the RFA, which collects road user charges.
“To date, the city has repaired more than 80 000 potholes and rehabilitated over 60 000 square metres of damaged road surface, despite ongoing resource constraints and the impact of adverse weather conditions,” he said.
To adequately preserve the road network, Matyayi said the city requires an estimated N$384 million annually for traffic related maintenance.
However, it received N$120 million a year, resulting in an annual shortfall of approximately N$264 million.
Matyayi said the deterioration of Windhoek’s roads is the result of a combination of ageing infrastructure, increasing traffic volumes, heavy vehicle usage, prolonged weather impacts and persistent budgetary constraints that have limited the city’s ability to carry out scheduled maintenance and rehabilitation.
“As Windhoek continues to expand, key arterial routes are experiencing substantially higher traffic volumes that in turn requires more frequent and structural extensive scheduled maintenance to ensure its operational efficiency is not compromised, and the absence of this maintenance leads to accelerating the rate of road deterioration,” he said.
Matyayi said according to the city’s pavement management system (PMS), which assessed the condition of surfaced roads in November 2023, the overall road network was in “fair” condition, but approximately half of the surfaced roads were already deteriorating.
He said the assessment found that 16% of road surfacing and 18% of the underlying pavement structures were in poor condition, with defects including brittle surfaces, extensive cracking and structural failures already evident before the recent rainy seasons.
Matyayi said the PMS estimated the replacement value of the city’s flexible pavement network at approximately N$15.4 billion, while the scheduled maintenance backlog stood at N$2.67 billion as of November 2023.
He said prolonged rainfall, flash floods and stormwater runoff severely damaged paved and gravel roads, drainage systems, culverts and bridges, while forcing the city to redirect resources from planned preventative maintenance to emergency repairs.
Matyayi added that the estimated value of rain related damage to road and stormwater infrastructure is about N$353 million.
RFA chief executive Ali Ipinge yesterday said the fund invested approximately N$991.6 million for road improvements in the city.
This includes “urban road maintenance and major upgrades to Peter Nanyemba Road, Auas Road and Winnie Madikizela Mandela Road, as well as the planned Sam Nujoma Drive/Winnie Madikizela Mandela Road Interchange”.
Ipinge said the investments where aimed at improving mobility and easing traffic congestion, particularly within Katutura, Khomasdal, Otjomuise, central Windhoek and the city’s southern arterial links.
“Progress on the major projects currently stands at approximately 90% for Peter Nanyemba Road, 60% for Auas Road and 30% for Winnie Madikizela Mandela Road, while the Sam Nujoma/Winnie Madikizela Mandela Interchange is at the design stage,” he said.
