SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.2 Provision for Road Requirements
In the case study of Stockville Valley a fully comprehensive Road Plan was produced as part of the LDP of the area. The Road Plan was intended to be used in the amendment of the Town Planning Scheme and provided useful guidance in respect of a rational and efficient circulation system that had to be accommodated in the scheme. Provision of roads has always been an integral part of the existing Town Planning Ordinance type of Town Planning Schemes. However, such roads, whether they be a new road, road closure or road widenings, were only provided on Town Planning Schemes Maps in the form of notations in the event of a municipality having intentions to carry out such works within a 5 year period. It did not provide an overall guidance in support of any forecast growth and physical development proposals of an area. Recommendations for new roads were left up to developers to put forward proposals or it was assessed on an individual subdivisional application basis. The result is that it does not give the municipal officials a holistic and integrated view on road requirements for a scheme area. More recently the eThekwini Municipality has produced an Integrated Transport Plan and Road Master Plan based on a 20 year vision. However the former plan only focuses on areas where high priority public transport networks exists and the latter plan main provides a future scenario in terms of major arterials and main community access roads. It does not provide much local guidance in respect of areas such as Cliffdale.
Diagram 5: Diagrammatic Example of Future Road Provision
Road servitude
1
Proposed road
2
-
3
Existing road
For example, it might be an overall long term objective to link community A with community B in order to improve transport circulation or overall vehicular circulation to accommodate future growth of an area. In most cases, the construction of public roads requires it to traverse multiple properties on order to reach its destination such as in property 1, 2 and 3 above. The most effective way for a municipality to acquire land for road purpose is through subdivisional approval conditions, which entitles the municipality to impose conditions upon landowners to register road servitudes either in favour of the municipality or to transfer a subdivided road reserve into its ownership. The construction of the entire road however could only occur when the municipality has acquired the land for the entire length of the road especially where different owners own the properties. In cases where the above three sites are being developed jointly, a developer would generally construct the entire road to the satisfaction of the local authority which is then transferred to the municipality's ownership for future maintenance thereof, assuming such road serves as a public road.
Without a Road Plan that alludes the official of the objective or provides guidance in respect of the proposed alignment of the link road, a planning official responsible for assessing a subdivisional application lodged for Site 1, for example, might not consider imposing a servitude condition. In the long term when the need arises for
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such a road, then the local authority has to undertake a cumbersome and expensive land expropriation process in order to acquire the land for the road purpose.
In Stockville there has been pressure placed on the municipality to take ownership of those roads, which were accepted as being "public roads" in view of maintaining and upgrading such roads. In terms of the Local Authorities Ordinance, local authorities may only maintain and upgrade roads that are defined as public streets and which road reserves and servitudes are registered in their favour. As most of the roads and even public accepted roads did not have any servitude registered over them, it was crucial that the Town Planning Scheme took this into account into noting on the scheme plan which existing roads will be considered as public streets. Guidance was therefore provided by the ownership status quo that was undertaken of all the roads in the Road Plan.
In an Appeal of Stockville residents versus the Outer West Operational Entity of the eThekwini Municipality for the inclusion of land reservation for the proposed MR360/1 freeway in the proposed Stockville Town Planning Scheme Map, the Appeals Board ruled in favour of the residents who objected to this inclusion. The Board were of the opinion that unless the municipality had intentions to construct the road within a 5 year period commencing from the date of adoption of the Town Planning Scheme, then such road reservations should not be accommodated in the scheme. To have such a road reservation especially for a freeway, it was felt that affected landowners could not be burdened by not knowing when the construction of the freeway would commence. Property values will constantly be under threat until such time as the freeway is completed.
In the case of Cliffdale, attention was mainly given to existing road reserves with priority recommendations to close certain unwanted road servitudes. Whilst such servitudes were already in the ownership of the municipality, the "5 year period"
principle would not apply.
From the Stockville precedent it was further learned from this case study that when preparing Town Planning Schemes for semi-rural and rural areas that were not previously subjected to Town Planning Schemes, it would be important to assess the status quo of the roads in respect of ownership and legitimacy. In the new Land Use Management Manual, transportation type zoning are allocated to roads such as:
Transportation and Access, Existing and Future Roads and Existing and Future Movement Corridors. It is therefore imperative that the status of road reserves are known before a municipality allocates such zoning to them.
In terms of the Local Authority Ordinance, municipalities are responsible for the maintenance of all public roads. In order to take on this responsibility it is necessary to gain a clear understanding of the current status quo ownership of all existing roads situated within a scheme area. A Local Road Plan would thus facilitate a rational and efficient circulation system and would also guide municipal officials in assessing future development applications and allocation of future budget towards the maintenance and upgrading and restructuring of roads. The Plan should therefore be an ultimate road plan indicating the road network recommended to serve the entire area based on zoning densities as contained in Land Use Schemes.
In preparation of a Local Road Plan for areas where the status of roads are unknown the following elements should be addressed:
~ Status quo and ownership of existing roads and road servitudes;
~ Road needs of existing community;
~ Assessment of future developments of the area based on the lOP and Town Planning Schemes to produce a long term potential for the number of erven that may eventuate within each particular land use zoning;
~ Future traffic volumes to be forecast on the basis of the estimated future development potential of the area under the existing or proposed zoning scheme;
~ Environmental considerations;
~ The determination of road standards to be used in the design of the road hierarchy and layout alignments;
~ Topography and geotechnical constraints;
~ Design of alternative road alignments, widening of eXisting roads and provision of road servitudes;
~ Undertaking consultation with Provincial Transport Departments, Local Authority and community representative structures.
The final Road Plan should preferably be considered as a supporting document that the Land Use Scheme should allude to or be inserted into the scheme clauses as an
annexure. Notations of the Scheme Map can also be used to inform readers of the road provision require ments.
As with environmental considerations, the LUMS Manual, 2004 recommends that Land Use Schemes must be aligned with transport considerations as well. The National Transport Policy promotes:
• Establish structures to facilitate integrated planning;
• Regulate land use development at a local level so that development approval conforms with integrated land use and transport plans;
• Serve travel needs of differentiated customer base with full cost recovery as far as possible - minimize need for subsidization;
• Integrated, cross-modal Transport Planning;
• Explicit commitment to putting public transport first;
• Channel develop ment into public transport corridors and nodes;
• Give priority to infilling, densification, mixed land use, promotion of corridors and nodes;
• Containment of urban sprawl; and
• Discourage decentralization that disperses employment generating activities except if this decreases total transport (LUMS Manual, 2004: 58)
Although Cliffdale currently has no public transport, the Scheme has fulfilled some of the policy requirements of promoting corridors and nodes with allocation of mix use zoning and higher density rights along such routes.