I love Bree street. It sounds like cheese. It’s got And Union in it. It has one less traffic light on it than Long Street. And it’s nice and wide. Hence the name. Bree (pronounced like beer, another reason to like it) is wide in Afrikaans. Until it got messed up.
It used to have parking both sides and two nice wide lanes. And Bond saw that it was good.
It used to be like this. Look at all the smiley faces.
And then the Julius Malema equivalent in town planning took up cycling. No, that can’t be it. He took a bribe from a cyclist. Yep, that’s more likely. And they added a cycling lane. By removing the parking on one side. Fair enough. Kinda.
A slight change. Not too bad.
However, in typical SA fashion, road markings are taken as general guidelines. Well not really. They are just used for fining people. No road users actually pay attention. Red Line = Park here, but could be expensive. Yellow line = Park here, the car guard said its fine. Keep left? Don’t come here with those tendencies. So now we have:
Complete stuff up.
The abomination that is now.
So Bree street is now a one and a half lane road. Cos people still park on the right. Yep, where the driving lane is now. But the city parking officials warn them not to. And call the tow trucks if they ignore them. Haha, just kidding. That would require all kinds of muscles and effort. And cut into important sitting down time. Or enforcement of a law other than speeding or parking.
Actually, the City of Cape Town just added some more free parking in the city. And I haven’t seen one cyclist in that lane.
But otherwise I’m fine. How are you?
I saw Helen Zille at that road junction when I was on the way to the World Cup quarter final.
I am not at liberty to divulge where she had parked her car.
Does she cycle?