Gweru city refurbishes robots

Midlands Bureau
GWERU City Council is refurbishing its traffic lights by installing 16 hybrid robots in the Central Business District, including at three new intersections. The move is meant to reduce traffic accidents and enhance the smooth flow of traffic. In an interview on Wednesday, the city acting engineer, Engineer Praymore Mhlanga, said the new robots would be installed at the intersection of Sixth Street and Lobengula Avenue, Eighth St and Lobengula Ave, and Robert Mugabe Avenue and Sixth St (Chicken Inn intersection).

The Sixth St and Lobengula Avenue intersection and the Sixth St and Robert Mugabe Way intersections were registering a high number of accidents mainly involving pirate taxis and commuter omnibuses plying the City-Senga/Nehosho/Midlands State University route.

“We started working on the project during the last week of September and we expect to have completed it in two months time. We are installing new robots at three intersections. There is now a lot of traffic on our city roads hence our decision to add three  more new robots at intersections which were recording high traffic accidents.

Our old robots were constantly breaking down and we are going to replace them with new traffic lights. We are putting hybrid robots that use both solar power and electricity. This will ensure that the robots are functional all the time,” said Eng Mhlanga.

He said the whole exercise would cost the city council around $650 000.