Road Development Agency (RDA) Communications and Corporate Affairs Manager Masuzyo Ndhlovu says the agency is working in conjunction with the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) to harmonise speed limits on most public roads.

Lusaka motorists have complained that the speed limit on most highways in the capital city were too low, thereby causing traffic congestion.

In an interview, Ndhlovu said the two agencies were working on something which would also factor in the various concerns raised by motorists concerning the un-harmonised speed limits.

“We are working in conjunction with RTSA just to harmonise all those things because there have been a lot of concerns lately because of the speed cameras and all those things. There is something we are working out and very soon we should be rolling out just to normalise all the concerns that stakeholders are bringing out. There was something that was still being worked on in the background. It’s mainly RTSA and ourselves as RDA because you know that the care, maintenance and construction of all public roads is vested in RDA and once that is done, then RTSA takes it up to enforce whatever systems that are put in place. But you know as a country we have also grown economically and there are more activities now. We have more vehicles now than ever before. I think very soon we should be coming up with a strategy on all those things,” Ndhlovu pledged.

Asked on the rationale considered when setting the existing speed limits, Ndhlovu said the variety of road users was of concern to to the agencies.

“There are situations where certain areas are densely populated, so obviously you have to come up with measures such as speed humps as part of road safety. So we do have a role to play as RDA in that the World Road Safety Action Plan is a decade of awareness and all those things which has been running from the year 2011 to 2020 so that there is consideration especially on the pedestrians and all the other vulnerable road users; be it cyclists and the others,” said Ndhlovu.

“At the moment if you see even the roads that we are currently constructing or currently putting up, we have a special consideration for pedestrians. So we do put walkways by the sides and we have elongated the shoulders so that there is easy passage for cyclist and other road users. So in the densely populated areas, obviously there are these coming measures that we have put in place like speed humps just to slow down traffic in those particular areas. But again in highway areas we are working in conjunction with RTSA and we are also going to factor in all the concerns that are coming from different stakeholders.”