Chapter 11 - Sedibeng District Municipality

midfield area and its attendant access arrangements w ill have to start relatively soon.
This has considerable impact on the road planning in the area.
In addition, it is estimated that the capacity of the present runw ay system w ill be
exceeded once the annual passenger throughput reaches 30 million. This w ill require
additional runw ays to be added w ith their attendant environmental problems. Suffice
it to say that ACSA’s ORTIA team is addressing all of these issues in consultation
with the affected National, Provincial and Local Authorities. Nonetheless, it is noted
that there w ill be considerable problems to be overcome in terms of environmental
impact, land acquisition and, above all, land access. The proposed double parallel
runw ay configuration and southern midfield terminal arrangements can be achieved
as far as the airfield itself is concerned. How ever, access w ill be complex and w ill
require considerable expansion of the road system as w ell as extension of the
Gautrain rail line to serve the southern midfield terminal area.
It has been pointed out by the ORTIA team that the airport itself adds approximately
10 percent to the traffic volumes of the existing road system. Nevertheless, provision
of access to the airport complicates the road system considerably by requiring
additional ramps w ith sub-standard weaving lengths. In addition, to provide for road
capacity and flexibility of routing to the airport, additional roads w ill need to be
provided as a matter of urgency. These roads include the PWV17, PWV15, PWV14,
PWV13, K86 and K88. In addition, other measures such as the Gautrain and
extensions to it may be considered to alleviate the pressure on the road system.
It is noted that ORTIA is now located in an expanding urban area such that traffic
volumes generated by other urban developments are grow ing rapidly. These could
become a limiting factor in ORTIA being able to reach its full projected capacity. This
could have the knock-on effect of requiring another site for a second major
international airport to be found at an early date. It is clear that the traffic aspects of
access to ORTIA as w ell as changes to land use in the area need an in-depth study
to determine if the projected traffic can indeed be accommodated even w ith the
additional roads and other measures mentioned above and discussed later. The
EMM IDP suggested that a study should be launched at an early stage to identify
alternative sites and to reserve the land for another future major international airport
for Gauteng.
The immediate implications of the phenomenal grow th being experienced at ORTIA
and assuming that the present trend continues are that there are and w ill be further
knock-on effects for other airfields in terms of taking up the overflow traffic. This
knock-on effect extends down through the various airfields. The first of these knockon
effects will probably be the relocation of all non-scheduled and low -cost airline
traffic other airports (Lanseria on the West Rand) w hich is the airport in the next level
of hierarchy. Lanseria is follow ed in the hierarchy by Wonderboom in Tshw ane,
Grand Central in Midrand and lastly RandAirport in Germiston. The effects on each of
these airfields are discussed below .
(b)
RandAirport, Germiston
RandAirport is a privately ow ned airport situated in Germiston in the north-east
quadrant of the junction of the N3 and N17 highw ays. Ambitious expansion plans
exist.
The airport’s ow ners are planning to sell off surplus ground as subdivided erven for
the development of airport related activities such as w arehousing and cold storage
facilities to accommodate perishable cargoes. In addition to the airport’s ow n land,
SDM DITP, 2008 to 2013 151 31 Aug 2010