AA Demands Public List of Broken Traffic Lights Ahead of Elections

AA wants every council to publish a list of broken traffic lights before the 4 November elections. Motoring body says voters, many of them on foot, face danger at dead intersections.

By Staff Reporter

The Automobile Association (AA) of South Africa wants every municipality to publish a list of its broken traffic lights and streetlights.

The AA says each fault on the list should have a reference number and a repair date. It wants the most urgent repairs done before the local government elections on 4 November and before the festive season.

Transport Month ends this week. The AA says that gives government and councils a last chance to lead before people go to the polls. It wants the list published now and updated every week.

“The person on foot takes the gamble”

“When a traffic light dies, the driver waits. The person on foot takes the gamble,” said AA chief executive Bobby Ramagwede.

“Mobility is not transport. It is the freedom to get to work, get your children to school, get home again and change your circumstances. Every dead intersection takes some of that freedom away, and it takes it first from the people who walk.”

The AA wants councils to fix routes to schools, polling stations and busy walking routes first.

Nomkhosi Magwaza, who responded to the AA on Facebook, said some drivers show pedestrians no respect at four-way stops. She said pedestrians often have to beg to cross the road.

Voters Walking In The Dark

Many voters will walk to polling stations on 4 November, and some will walk after dark.

Lebogang Tiego Legodi, an associate professor of political science at the University of Limpopo, wrote about this in September. She recalled that queues around Polokwane in 2024 were so long that some people voted at midnight. Parts of the city have had no streetlights for more than two years.

She asked whether women now wonder, “Will I make it home alive after casting my vote?”

“No one should have to weigh up that question on election day,” said Ramagwede.

“Theft explains a broken light. It does not excuse leaving it broken. The first step costs almost nothing: publish the list. A motorist sitting at a dead robot has no way of knowing whose it is or when it will work again. Tell them, then fix it in the order you said you would.”

A Problem In Many Cities

In July, Kariega businessman Jevon Dyer loaded about five broken traffic lights onto a trailer. He offloaded them outside the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s customer care office. The lights outside his shop in Caledon Street had been out for months. He said he had seen several accidents and near misses at the intersection.

“I thought, why not? I was just tired,” he said at the time. A week later, the lights were still lying outside the building.

Days after his protest, Yolisa Pali-Jongilanga, the metro’s political head for roads and transport, spoke to a council committee. She said the city could no longer justify repairing the same traffic lights, because thieves stripped their cables within weeks. On the M17, thieves stripped the lights seven weeks after repairs.

“We cannot afford to continuously repair the same traffic lights every three months due to repeated acts of vandalism,” she said. “It almost seems as though we are feeding the thieves each time we do repairs.”

Other cities face the same trouble:

• In Pietermaritzburg, some residents wait almost an hour in afternoon peak traffic when the lights on key routes are out.
• In Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) said in July that more than 300 of its traffic signals had stolen or vandalised equipment. The lights at Chadwick Avenue and 5th Street in Wynberg had been out for more than a year. The JRA said there was “currently no date for repairs”.
• In Polokwane, residents reported in July that 21 intersections had broken lights.

Stop Signs Replace Lights

Some councils have stopped repairing lights at the worst-hit intersections.

Ekurhuleni spent roughly R120 million on repairs in one financial year. It then replaced signals at some high-risk intersections with stop signs. The city said some of those stop signs may become permanent.

In Centurion, the city decommissioned the signals at Botha and Hoffmeyer streets. It turned the intersection into a three-way stop.

In Gauteng, the provincial Department of Roads and Transport looks after only 547 of the province’s more than 4,500 signalised intersections. In July, it appointed contractors for a repair and restoration programme that it expects to take 36 months.

Money And Fuel

The Centre for Risk Analysis has warned that road safety and economic costs rise the longer signals go unrepaired. It said insurers and motorists carry the immediate burden.

The JRA has a maintenance backlog of more than R115 billion. Its annual budget is R1.8 billion. For about a week in June, the City of Johannesburg stopped fuelling the agency’s vehicles. The city’s member of the mayoral committee for transport said field teams were “effectively grounded”.

Broken lights also waste fuel. A queue at a dead intersection is a line of idling engines. An idling passenger car uses roughly one to two litres of fuel an hour, depending on engine size and air-conditioning use. A commuter stuck for close to an hour could burn up to two litres while barely moving. Inland, 95 unleaded costs R30.25 a litre this month.

The government announced on 21 October 2026 that petrol would go down by R1.50 a litre and diesel by R3.00 a litre.

“The levy cut is good news, but motorists will still feel it at the pump,” said Ramagwede. “The government has a second lever that has nothing to do with the oil price. A driver idling at a broken robot is paying for fuel that takes them nowhere. Fix the light and that money stays in their pocket. It is a saving government can start delivering this week, and it starts with a list.”

Cape Town Tries A Different Fix

Cape Town is testing another answer. At some high-risk intersections, the city seals a traffic light’s wiring and parts in a buried concrete chamber. Sensors alert law enforcement if someone tries to dig it up. Batteries keep the lights running during power cuts. The city’s mayoral committee has called the chambers a success.

“If one city can engineer the theft out, every other city owes its residents a costed answer on why it cannot,” said Ramagwede.

Help For Voters

Until the lights are fixed, the AA urges voters to plan how they will get to and from their polling station. It also wants them to keep help within reach.

The AA’s Armed Response service on the MyAA app lets users call for armed response wherever they are, at the press of a button. The AA is encouraging South Africans to set it up before 4 November.

“We will keep pressing councils to fix the lights,” said Ramagwede. “But a voter walking home in the dark on 4 November needs help that night, not when the repair budget comes through. Where government falls short, the AA can still help.”

AA Advice For Road Users

Until repairs are done, the AA advises road users to:

• Treat any traffic light that is not working as a four-way stop, as the JRA advises. Take extra care at peak hours and near schools.
• Obey stop signs where a council has replaced a traffic light with them, and expect some drivers not to.
• Keep windows up and valuables out of sight at stop streets and dead intersections, where residents report more smash-and-grabs.
• Slow down on unlit roads and assume there is a pedestrian you cannot see.
• If on foot, wear light-coloured or reflective clothing, carry a torch or use your phone’s light, and walk facing oncoming traffic where there is no pavement.
• Walk with others where possible, especially early in the morning and after dark.
• Set up AA Armed Response so that help is a tap away on the way to and from your polling station, and on any walk after dark.
• Report faults to your municipality and keep the reference number. Report suspicious activity around traffic signals and other infrastructure to the authorities, as Gauteng’s Department of Roads and Transport has asked.

Employers Asked To Help

The AA also wants employers to think about how their staff travel before sunrise and after dark. Many shift workers walk to and from work in the dark.

Employers can change shift times, arrange transport or lift clubs, and log every fault on their staff’s routes. Businesses that depend on a particular intersection can help secure it through formal agreements with the municipality. Those agreements should leave responsibility for repairs where it belongs.

“People ask why a mobility organisation cares about the person on foot,” said Ramagwede. “My answer is simple: if it moves, it concerns me. People crossing a dead intersection are road users too.”