P J Maud, Helderberg Estate
I refer to the recent letter about a proposed development on Helderberg College land to be accessed through Helderberg Estate (“Enough is enough”, Bolander, January 11).
As a resident of the estate, I have done some calculations with help from a professional builder.
To build a house takes approximately 200 days.
For each day there is likely to be a minimum of two site visits, ie four road trips through our estate, if only to drop off and pick up workers.
After taking into account delivery of supplies and visits by contractors, this could become four visits, ie eight road journeys, per day. Four to eight road trips for (say) 50 houses gives a total of 40 000 to 80 000 journeys through our residential roads during the building of this new development.
On top of this, there will need to be the building of the site infrastucture such as roads, walls, drainage, etc, and delivery of supplies for these.
The amount of additional traffic through the narrow roads
of Helderberg Estate will in all probability be 50 000 to 100 000 journeys during the construction period.
The proposed building of a circle at the end of Harewood Avenue suggests that much of this traffic will use Harewood Avenue for access to Irene Avenue
Harewood Avenue is narrow and confined by over-hanging oaks, which would need to be cut back or removed.
In addition, the road is in poor condition and would be difficult to resurface without damaging the tree roots.
Once the development is complete, there will still be at least 100 additional vehicle movements per day, probably double.
Say 50 houses with two cars per house, involving daily work and school trips, domestics, gardeners, estate workers.
Our roads were not built to cope with this level of traffic.This must not be allowed to happen.
The municipality should be looking after the interests of the ratepayers and residents and not the developers!
