Examining the role of Braamfontein’s bike lanes: A potential infrastructural asset for waste reclaimers

Abstract

The research sought to address the mobility challenges that street reclaimers encountered and the misuse of bike lanes. Street reclaimers depend on their mobility to earn a sustainable income. Their mobility allows them to work from the early hours of the day, salvaging recyclables to sell to the buy-back centres in the late afternoons. The roads used by reclaimers are a territory for vehicles where street reclaimers are often stigmatised and not viewed as the rightful users of this infrastructure. On the other hand, to encourage cycling, the City of Johannesburg implemented bike lanes that have since been used by vehicles for parking and to bypass traffic, and by informal traders as a trading spots. Bike lanes are a potential infrastructural asset for street reclaimers as they can ease their mobility challenges and include them on the road space. With the concepts of Infrastructure Re-adaptation, Informal Economies and Non- Motorised Transport (NMT), the research discovered that street reclaimers had found ways to move around the roads and that transportation was at the bottom of their hierarchy of necessities. Furthermore, the city implemented bike lanes with reclaimers in mind; however, this form of the cycle lane infrastructure cannot be appropriated by physically modifying the material construction. Finally, the study concluded that with a bottom-up approach including reclaimers and other stakeholders, the city could consider converting bike lanes to NMT lanes, and the routes used by reclaimers can frame targeted interventions for future lanes.