Construction on Inner City intermodal transport facility delayed
The City of Johannesburg is a major sub-Saharan transport hub with hundreds of thousands of visitors, workers and residents travelling between the city and destinations across South and Southern Africa. To guarantee that they can travel safely and with dignity, the City has been constructing a long distance and cross border bus and mini bus taxi transport interchange alongside Park Station in the Inner City.
To be named the Johannesburg International Transport Interchange (JITI) when completed, it will have facilities for 20 buses and over 150 taxis to rank at any one time as well as holding facilities for over 600 taxis. There will also be retail facilities, waiting spaces and ablution facilities.
The project was being implemented for the Department of Transport by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), the Development Agency of the City of Johannesburg. The project, on which construction started in July 2016, was due to be completed within the next couple of months. However, construction has been delayed due to the fact that the leading Joint Venture partner of the main contractor on the project, Basil Read, filed for business rescue in June 2018. This was after a number of delays and challenges that the JDA had been facing with the construction consortium which lead to the contractor failing to reach practical completion in March 2018.
As a result the JDA had no option but to terminate the contract with the Joint Venture Consortium, as the Joint Venture could not provide the necessary construction guarantee as required and they did not have the financial capacity to complete the works says Christo Botes, CEO of the JDA.
The JDA is now proceeding with a new procurement process to source a new contractor. This will lead to at considerable delay and completion is now targeted for September 2019.
“We apologise, especially to our long distance and cross border visitors, for this delay but promise that when complete, JITI will change your experience of long distance travel” said the Member of the Mayoral Committee for Transport, Cllr. Nohlanhla Makhuba.
Detailed traffic and pedestrian management plans can be downloaded on www.jda.org.za, updates can be found on Facebook (Johannesburg Development Agency).
While the process for the procurement of a new contractor continues, the JDA has made sure that the site will be well secured.
