The R18 million construction of Hawthorn Street is now practically complete, and the contractor is finalizing the snag items to completely validate the end of the project before the official handover.

Hawthorn Street is one of the backyard access streets within the Greater Kokstad Municipality’s Central Business District (CBD). The street is predominantly residential with Jens Senior Primary School and Kokstad Junior at one end. In line uplifting the face of our CBD and fulfilling priorities set out in the Integrated Development Plan (IDP), the project to reconstruct the existing Hawthorn Street was funded through Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) to enable it to serve its primary function as a traffic relief route to relieve main streets in town as well as to formulate effective engineering solutions for the Reconstruction of Hawthorn Street Phase 1 to serve the community of Greater Kokstad Municipality as well as road users. 

The scope of this project was to reconstruct Hawthorn Street from Chainage km 0+000 (R56) to Chainage km 0+280 (Wylde Road) and introduce a centre Island from Chainage km 0+280 (Wylde Road) to Chainage km 0+780 (Barclay Street). The total length of Hawthorn Road to be constructed under this contract is 780m long and a width of 12m including the 2m wide Island. This included the surfacing of the pavement by 30mm thick asphalt, and the grassing of the Island planted with ground cover flowers. The road includes a sidewalk on one end and open channel drains on the other side. Some sections have underground stormwater to collect and channel water across the road at various intervals. 

The new roadway accommodates two traffic lanes separated by a centre Island constructed per the COLTO standards will have a pavement consisting of a roadbed 150mm ripped and compacted to 95% MOD ASSHTO, G6/7 selected layer compacted to 93% MOD ASSHTO, C4 sub-base 150mm thick, G2 base 150mm thick and 25mm asphalt blacktop surfacing and paving for the sidewalk. At full completion, the stormwater drainage facilities will consist of approximately 850m long 600mm diameter stormwater pipes and 120m long 950mm diameter concrete stormwater pipes. Some existing underground pipelines, cables and services were envisaged to be relocated during the construction process.

The road is now practically complete, and the contractor is finalising the snag items to justify Completion.

By Zolani Siqwayi