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South Africans love to keep up a sense of humour about our country’s dire pothole problem but jokes aside, it’s about time that the government gets creative about the craters. Hence, it’s exciting news to hear that the Department of Transport is dabbling in nanotechnology in order to smooth out SA’s roads.

The North West is the lucky province to take part in the pilot programme and let’s be real, the attention to roads in this area is sorely needed.

Contrary to popular belief, nanotechnology is not necessarily some unattainable sci-fi trope but rather involves studying chemical reactions in order to manipulate materials.

In the case of SA, this means looking into road surfaces used in the country and formulating ways to reduce load damage over time as well as water seepage.

University of Pretoria research has contributed significantly to what the Transport Department are calling “a groundbreaking step” when it comes to SA infrastructure. According to the research:

“A combination of modified existing technologies is recommended to partially restore severely compromised road surfacings, especially applicable to secondary and tertiary urban road networks.”

These kinds of technologies have been used before in general building materials but it’s a giant step (over a large pothole) for our country to be adapting this knowledge for roads specifically.

In addition to the nanotechnology pilot plan, the Department of Transport also announced that in light of government ministries being seemingly unable to keep up with the task of looking after the country’s roads, many key roads will be moved to the jurisdiction of the South African National Roads Agency SOC Ltd (SANRAL).

This can be taken as a win for SA as, despite what you think of their iffy tolling policies, parastatal body SANRAL continues to maintain thorough maintenance and regulation of roads under their care.

“The province would furnish a comprehensive list of strategic roads marked for transfer to Sanral. These roads would be officially gazetted as national roads and effectively maintained by Sanral,” the department explained.

Fingers crossed that the new plans to improve SA’s roads don’t just whittle away into yet more chasms that munch up our car tires.

[source:businesstech]