Querying the half-finished bridges

Thanks to Kobus Van Zyl for this question: "Just what are the main reasons for the half-finished bridges we see in CT? Also, the M5 to Muizenberg stops abruptly in a connection that was clearly designed for the highway to continue." Why?

Good question - any suggestions?

Here's my (much abridged) version. 

The plans for the M5 and M3 came rather late in the overall road planning for Cape Town's roads and as early as 1955 the National Transport Commission was warning that heavy expenditure was anticipated in Cape Town and future road proposals would need to be "scientifically studied on the basis of a traffic survey" (City Engineer's Report 1956). Not surprisingly, then, Cape Town commissioned a large traffic survey in 1956.  A ten-year road plan was developed in 1957 but even this did not contain the M3 or M5 and the first plan of them that I am aware of is in 1960 (by which time the N2 and N9 were substantially open and operational - construction on the Black River Parkway between N1 and N2 began in 1961.)

The Foreshore material makes clear the growing tensions between levels of government over road funding during the 1960s, and this must be understood in the context of pressure for more road expenditure across urban areas throughout the country. All this in a time when South African engineers were emboldened to follow their US cousins and propose dense networks of  freeways and expressways. The plan right (from Road International magazine) from 1965 shows one version of the freeway plan. 

By the 1970s the political, financial and planning pressure (together with some citizen pressure from Newlands) had become too much and local municipalities simply ran out of money and appetite for what were (in retrospect) probably over ambitious freeway plans. M3 and M5 were rather low down the list and so were effectively suspended (along with elements of the Foreshore Freeway).That's my take on it anyway. Anyone else?

Elevation of the freeway

Here's something which I didn't mention last night which I wonder if older structural engineers may shed some light on. The correspondance in Lord Holford's archive at the University of Liverpool includes lots of debate about the views north-south to-from the harbour/proposed civic centre and mountain. Holford was clearly keen to maintain that visual link, but was also convinced of the need for an elevated limited access road along the foreshore, and so the debate was about the degree of elevation, and whether it was preferable to have an elevated freeway on a structure, or a lower freeway mainly on groundworks, and/or an elevated civic centre.

One of the audience mentioned yesterday about a highly skilled German structural engineer at VKE (Horst Wiessler - thanks to Frank Holmes for confirming this) who was later part of the scheme team. I wonder, how significant was that in the early 1960s? Was there a lack of structural expertise in Cape Town which this German engineer significantly added to? Transport planning at that time was in a period of growth, invention and expansion, partly thanks to developments in computing technology and the mass calculations made possible by that. Was this growing computer power significant in structural engineering too? 

Any thoughts?

Recalling the Foreshore Freeway

Thanks to the many of you who took time out to listen to some of my stories about the Foreshore Freeway project, gleaned as part of my PhD research. It seemed like a beginning of something rather than an end, and so (thanks Marianne for the suggestion), here's an online space where the talk can continue. I want this to be a comfortable open place for recollection about the planning and engineering of the Foreshore, and look forward to hearing more from you. You can comment below, forward postings, and if you want to then you can subscribe to an email "feed" from the site. Although I won't be publishing the whole story here, I will add pieces which I think will be of interest as they come up.