ANOTHER ROAD THAT WILL TAKE YOU NOWHERE

Oct 11, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

The four lane highway from La Penitence to Providence is going to be extended all the way to Grove. This is an understandable project considering the developments at Diamond, which is expected within the next five years to be the most populated area in the country with about some sixty thousand residents.
Already there is a need for a larger roadway to accommodate the heavy traffic which causes road jams during peak hours. These things however should have been anticipated if there was proper development planning. But long-term planning is something that is off the front-burner in the country and therefore within the next year of so, when the highway extension project gets going will be utter chaos on that East Bank Road.
This is not the first time that such chaos will take place. Years ago when the bridges were being constructed there were problems with traffic control. Lines of traffic stretched for miles at times and it took twice as long to get into the city than before. A decision was then taken to build a four lane highway and once again the bridges had to be first built and then the roadway extended. Again problems developed.
The four -lane highway brought considerable relief to motorists. It cut the travel time by more than half but as this was happening there were the housing and business development on the East Bank and the rapid increase in the number of vehicles using the roadways.
The situation has become so problematic that at least two times per day, the Demerara Harbour Bridge has to use both of its lanes for one way traffic. The development planners it would seem did not cater for increased movement of persons from the West Demerara area even though the government has seen thousands of additional individuals take up residence there because of the housing development. They will probably wait until the situation becomes intolerable before they begin to consider greater job creation investments in West Demerara.
Right now the main concern however is the developments at Diamond which will lead to greater problems on the narrow East Bank roadway. As such, a decision has been taken to widen the four lane highway. This means of course widening the bridges that were originally built when the old road was being resurfaced, a project that caused great discomfort to motorists.
Bridges are again being constructed to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and there are problems with traffic control. Those problems are not going to get any better when the road extension between Providence and Grove begins. So just when the number of vehicles are increasing, there would be major disruptions to the flow of traffic, and all in the name of development.
And the chief culprit is the lack of planning, something that you do not expect from governments whose parties come from a tradition of central planning.
It seems to me that unless some innovative thinking takes place we are going to have major disruptions of traffic during an election year next year.
There is a way around this whole problem but it involves the government reconsidering what it is doing, something that it does not like to do. No government in fact likes to change course because it makes them seem as if they did not know what they were doing in the first place.
The way around this problem is to build another road through the cane fields, linking Georgetown to Grove. Another suggestion is for a road circumventing Providence and exiting at Diamond. The problem with this latter suggestion is that because of the volume of traffic using the road now and expected to use the road in the future, the existing four lane highway will not eventually be able to take off that amount of vehicles. As such, the only solution is to build a new road from Georgetown to Diamond as previously envisioned by the late Forbes Burnham.
His idea was to construct this new road and to link it to Mandela Avenue. The problem has always been that in constructing this road, private lands will have to be taken in and since the government hastily changed our laws to allow for compensation at market values for land compulsory acquired, it means that the State will have to put billions of dollars into private hands just to make this road.
The only solution therefore is instead of spending billions on a narrow stretch of roadway between Providence and Grove, that roadway be constructed from Diamond going East into the cane fields and exiting at Providence, in which case there will have to be a designated lane exclusively for this traffic.  It will cause some problems but it will be far cheaper and much better than what is being proposed now, which will become redundant within two years of completion.
As such, this roadway should be commenced regardless of which of the two major options- the extension of the four lane highway or a road to Diamond is decided on.

---

---