Road Sense

Oct 26, 2009 Editorial

In our Sunday Edition, it was reported that the Government is planning to extend the four-lane highway from the Providence Stadium vicinity to Diamond.

The rationale offered was the inordinate delays for commuters during the rush hours that are precipitated by the traffic jams between those two points.

There is not much need to carry on at this time on whether the cart has been pushed before the horse once again but it should not be of any surprise to anyone, even a bureaucrat, that the area would have become congested after the explosion in housing schemes aback of Diamond and Grove.

We do believe that most citizens understand that we are a poor country and that we do not have the resources to put the entire necessary infrastructure in place in one fell swoop in our developmental thrust.

But what is more than a little frustrating is the lack of planning for such development. The reason offered for the planned bus and car parks (not to mention market) in front of the new Diamond Housing Scheme not being in place is that the land was already sold to a private business. Really?

At the time the scheme was planned, was the land already sold? We believe not. Then what about the doctrine of eminent domain? Could the government not offer to relocate the snackette owner with due compensation because of the special circumstance?

But what caught our attention was the throwaway comment that the Government was “planning to name Grove as a town”. Is this how we get a town? Simply confer the designation? Let us consider the traffic implications of such a township.

The Grove Public Road is already a nightmare before, during and after rush hours. It is always congested with pedestrians and vehicles so that the flow-by traffic always reaches a bottleneck. The question that arises is “Why has the Government decided that the four-lane highway should end at Diamond?

The quick retort we suspect would be that there is not sufficient reserve space to handle a doubling of the lanes. But this simply identifies a constraint that the planners have to overcome: the present situation is a hazard to life and limb and we can only shudder to think what it will evolve into in a few years.

The Government had better accept that the traffic congestion is an inevitable outcome of the very success of its housing drive. If the truth be told, it does not take a rocket scientist to predict that the entire East Bank Demerara corridor – from Georgetown to Timehri – will become one of the densest population centres in the country.

The planning, we are therefore saying, must be in place to ensure that such development becomes more orderly than has been the case up to now. But then again, maybe it is – after all we heard years ago that there was to be a parallel road a few miles east of the present East Bank Road all the way from the East Coast to Timehri to relieve the expected congestion.

So are the tales of those that bought properties that now impede development simply about persons who were allowed to profiteer? And what about the parallel highway? Has the land been identified?

Finally, we would like to resubmit a suggestion we made some years ago when the four-lane highway was introduced between Providence and Georgetown. We knew that the highway was cutting through villages that had been intimately connected in the more placid olden days and that the inevitable cross traffic by villagers would lead to an upsurge in accidents.

Our fears were unfortunately proven right. We suggested then, and do so once again, that overhead “cross-overs” be constructed – at least one per village – so that the continuity of village life is maintained.

These structures are not very expensive and have been used very successfully in neighbouring Trinidad. The planners, as well as the pedestrians, must show more sense as we develop.

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