Financial services company Investec has become the first property owner to participate in an initiative spearheaded by the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) and the Sandton Central Management District to ensure traffic lights at major intersections in Sandton Central continue to operate during bouts of loadshedding by using generator power sourced from adjacent building owners.

Investec's participation in the Traffic Signal Secondary Power Initiative will see the company's generator resources power the traffic lights at two key intersections: Grayston drive and Rivonia road; and Grayston drive and West road south. The roadworks required to connect generator power to these two busy intersections are already under way.

“Going forward, during loadshedding, Investec’s generators will power two critical intersections in Sandton, ensuring continuous operation of the traffic lights and alleviating congestion. We are the first property owner in Sandton Central to participate in this initiative and hope many others will get involved,” Investec Group COO Stuart Spencer said at the launch of the initiative, in Sandton, on May 3.

He said that, while Investec’s participation in the initiative could be labelled as a corporate social responsibility action, it also served to benefit Investec employees and customers by minimising time wastage and productivity losses owing to lengthy traffic jams caused by power outages.

“The productivity loss is much higher than people think. We are a back-in-office organisation, but with people sitting in traffic for one to three hours, it is not productive – not from our perspective nor from an economy perspective. These types of initiatives can help the productivity in the country and address some of the societal issues we face,” he said.

The initiative entails a redesign of the signal wiring to allow for a secondary power connection to the nearest adjacent property, which will be undertaken by the JRA. Participating property owners will then facilitate the necessary connection to their own backup power system, whether solar, generator or uninterrupted power supply batteries, so that traffic lights can function when loadshedding kicks in.

“The JRA continues to find innovative ways to ensure we deliver on our promise to provide ‘smart mobility’ and safer roads to the residents of Johannesburg,” JRA acting CEO Louis Nel said.

He explained that many other solutions to keep Johannesburg’s traffic lights up and running during loadshedding have been tabled but they were either impractical to implement, too expensive, or otherwise too likely to be stolen.

“This solution is the right solution for the current environment. We want to focus on the greater Johannesburg to make sure that we've got at least our major arterials and our major intersections working so that people can get in and out with as little interference from disabled traffic signals and congestion as possible,” Nel said.

From Investec’s side, a small investment of about R45 000 ensured that connection points could be established on its premises for the JRA’s infrastructure to interface with. Each set of light-emitting diode traffic lights at both intersections only draws about 300 W, which Spencer said is a negligible figure considering the company’s overall energy requirements. For perspective, he revealed that the company spent about R23-million on diesel for its eight onsite generators in the 2022/23 financial year, while the traffic lights might cost at most about R1 000 a month to run when loadshedding is at its most severe.

“Our work on this project will give some much-needed relief to motorists and ensure Sandton's roads are safer for everyone. The initiative is a wonderful example of what can be accomplished when key stakeholders join forces to tackle the city’s most pressing issues,” Sandton Central Management District improvement manager Elaine Jack said.

She said the first discussions around the Traffic Signal Secondary Power Initiative began in August last year.

However, JRA mobility and freight acting department head Sipho Nhlapo said that, now that the initiative was up and running, many more public-private partnerships are expected to be established that will see as many as 2 020 intersections across Johannesburg receive similar back-up power solutions installed over the next few years.

He said that there were about 50 private companies and property owners already in talks to follow in Investec’s footsteps, including companies such as Blue Label Telecoms, Goldfields and Nedbank.

“We are encouraged by the number of businesses who are joining hands with the JRA to improve the city’s traffic mobility during loadshedding,” JRA chairperson Charles Cilliers added.

Nel said the JRA was in the process of seeking funding from national government to not only resurface the ageing road infrastructure around Johannesburg, but to also update the city’s traffic lights to be more intelligent and respond to traffic in real time.

He believed this would serve to further reduce congestion as well as incidences of hijacking and smash-and-grab robberies as motorists waited for long intervals at intersections.

However, before such intelligent systems can be implemented, reliable power supply to every intersection needs to be established, which is what Nel believed the Traffic Signal Secondary Power Initiative would achieve.