Johannesburg’s traffic lights are a nightmare, notorious for going offline and major contributors to its traffic congestion. This is no trivial matter, yet neither is the nature of the problem itself. With over 2 000 traffic lights across the city, not to mention various fault types that require different interventions and departments, increasing the reliability of the service is no small feat.

Darryll Thomas, head: mobility networks at Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA), laid out the complexity of the situation, then revealed his new superweapon: the Intelligent Transport System (ITS). By analysing data collected from those traffic lights, represented on dashboards, the JRA is gaining unique insights.