End in sight for ‘Road to Nowhere’? Watch this space, says CT Mayor

Cape Town’s infamous ‘Road to Nowhere’ - a piece of elevated highway that ends abruptly above the foreshore – may finally be going somewhere, according to Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

The abandoned section of highway, for years a monument to the complexities of urban planning, now features in a new design that will soon be released for public comment.

“We are in the final stages of design on the completion of the Road to Nowhere,” the Mayor said in response to questions at a Cape Chamber engagement this week. The design plan could be released by September, and possibly sooner, the Mayor said. “The idea is that once we move past the public consultation phase, we will go into the detailed engineering design phase.”

However, a few logistical hurdles remain before the dangling freeway touches ground again. The City still needs to acquire the necessary real estate to turn their plan into reality. “There are still a number of questions to be answered, and we are in negotiations with Transnet about whether we can purchase a piece of their land that we’d like to use for completion,” Hill-Lewis.

Cape Chamber will update this story as soon as the design is made public. 

The ‘Road to Nowhere’ (also known as the Foreshore Freeway Bridge), was originally part of a multi-phase highway meant to link the city centre, harbour, and surrounding routes. The The project was halted in the 1970s due to a funding shortfall.