Westdene Residents object to the Melville 'Safe Streets' Initiative

Dear Safe Streets Melville Committee,

We as Westdene residents note with concern the proposed plan to permanently close off roads leading through Melville. As fellow citizens of South Africa as well as your suburb neighbours, we can appreciate all the reasons why you may want to forge ahead with this plan at this time. However we strongly urge you to reconsider, as well as to explore other, more humane, avenues that may keep your (and our) suburb safe. We feel that the proposed closures will have a detrimental effect on not only your surrounding suburbs, but on the City of Johannesburg as a whole. Many Westdene residents have voiced objections to this plan and we have collated the main points below:

TRAFFIC AND CONGESTION:

• Despite the fact that you have conducted traffic impact assessments, according to the daily, lived reality of commuters, we strongly believe that the plan will drastically disturb traffic flow and increase commuter time and costs for many hundreds of people. In many cases, current travel times will be doubled.
• In particular, traffic on Main Road, 4th Avenue, Ayr Road and surrounding roads such as Kingsway, Judith, Barry Hertzog and Empire (all already highly congested roads) will become negatively impacted due to the proposed closures, with worsening traffic leading to even longer travel times.
• The closures will reduce access to Milpark hospital as well as to various local schools and other shared essential services in the area for many residents of Westdene and surrounding suburbs.
• The amount of traffic that passes through Melville each day will simply not be able to be realistically accommodated on the alternative routes provided.
• We do not believe that the too few ‘manned access gates’ provided are going to address the major traffic impacts mentioned above.

EXCLUSIONARY:

• People who travel on foot (for example: children, students, labourers, domestic workers, reclaimers etc.) and who work and/or live in Melville and surrounding neighbourhoods will be forced to bypass and/or change their routes to and within Melville. They will therefore spend more time, effort and money moving around and getting to work/home/school.
• Given the above, we feel there is an underlying classist nature of the closures whereby, once again, the least-privileged members of our society will be forced to pay the true cost of the proposed road closures.
• It sits uncomfortably with us that Melville residents believe that they are the only suburb in the area that is affected by serious crime and that the solution is to isolate their suburb, not caring about the myriad negative ripple effects that will happen for the rest of us as a result of this drastic measure.
• We foresee that the initiative will also be a POPIA nightmare as to who controls the various information and who will be liable for the safe-keeping of details taken from cars and pedestrians through Melville.
• The added cost of the plan to close off Melville will likely make the suburb unaffordable for many people who may wish to live and open businesses there in the future.

Melville has long been an important cultural hub for Johannesburg, famous for its multiculturalism, multiracialism and also its creative and inclusive atmosphere. It is our understanding that the Safe Streets initiative will serve to radically alter this atmosphere for the worse and not for the better as you imagine. Nobody wants to feel excluded from a place and, if they do, they will not go there. As South Africans, we should know this well by now.

AN ALTERNATIVE?

We understand that the main concern for Melville residents is safety - you are worried about increased levels of crime, as are we all. As we understand it, much of this crime is centred around the businesses on 7th Street. Moving forward, we would like to urge the Safe Streets initiative to instead focus on those streets that are problematic with regards to crime, namely 7th Street and parts of 4th Avenue. We suggest the following:

• Pedestrianise 7th Street and part of 4th Avenue (up until the corners of 6th Street and 8th Street)
• Use the funds that you would have spent on closing off all Melville streets to invest in increased security guards with more visibility 24/7 for the newly pedestrianised streets.

Support the businesses in Melville to increase their security presence especially in more vulnerable times such as evenings and weekends.Engage your neighbours in suburb and cross-suburb wide plans for safety and security in our part of Johannesburg. Let’s build a longer table, not a higher wall.

A report by the South African Human Rights Commission concluded the following:

‘The Commission does not generally support the use of boom gates and gated communities. The Commission is of the view that based on the information it has, these measures cause social division, dysfunctional cities and lead to the further polarisation of our society. In addition, the proposed benefits they bring by way of enhanced safety and security are in doubt and the subject of considerable debate. It has been demonstrated that such enhanced safety and security is possible through the use of alternate means.’

As your neighbours, we urge you to reconsider your plan which, from where we sit, looks to serve only a few at the cost of many.We appreciate the opportunity to make our views known and look forward to engaging further with the Safe Streets Committee on this important issue.

Kindly,

Your Neighbours

Kyla Davis    Contact the author of the petition