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A serious crisis – The Diamond traffic jam to Georgetown

Nov 20, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
A preponderance of vehicles have flooded our roads, it is only a matter of time before we are saddled with a serious crisis. Definitely there is every need for having new pathways, highways, major roads where possible – above, below, sideways, however!
I will single out just one area where I can testify to this traffic irritant and which I think mirrors other places, as others can bear witness to – coming out of Diamond Housing Scheme in the mornings between say 6am and 8am.  To get into Georgetown is bare stress, there is more often than not a traffic jam – good for those who have become accustomed, they have done themselves well fitting into this routine.  The build-up of vehicles along this route is so massive that it tests both the tolerance of drivers and passengers to the ‘max’!
Now when one reaches the main road on the East Bank, what should be a mere 15-20 minutes’ drive – give or take some – into the city, can end up taking one hour and a half or more!   This build-up from within the scheme is so established that traffic cops are placed along the road to maintain order, and rightly so.
Some folks trying to avoid being caught in it leave very early, but that can only help so much and no more. It is ridiculous expecting folks living 15-20 minutes driving distance from their place of work, school, whatever their destination, to leave home 5-5:30am for 7-8am assignment!  Why should that be? One can understand doing so in rare cases of emergency, but not as a routine.  No wonder this daily scenario sets nerves on edge, pushes some over the brink, causes accidents, and sometimes develops into conflict.
And it just goes to show how thorough and forward thinking any development plan has got to be. Definitely some things cannot be done independent of itself; most things are contingent on another, this is what breeds continuity and propels real progress.
However, for one thing, this vehicular railway chain-like traffic weaving an artistic seawall-like border wall beginning way down to the back of the Diamond Scheme all along the main road, crawls between intervals at snail’s pace to dead stop into the East Bank main road, all the way to the city, creating a lovely pattern, yet annoyingly undesirable.  As someone noted: all beauty isn’t goodness.
There’s reason aplenty that this traffic congestion be soon attended to, vehicles are coming in as if going out of style – in a rush. Everyone with a dollar wants a car, craves one, so at the rate they are being acquired, the heavy influx with no addition to existing roads, it’s easy to understand the rapid overnight and expanding increase in traffic build-ups and traffic jams.  If Diamond is a microcosm, and this scenario spreads across the country, in the event of any serious emergency or crisis – pray God forbids – if not may Jesus be our Shepherd.
Oh! En passant: Observe, we have become so accustomed to ridiculous and out of place things that they don’t bother us anymore, period.  The nice-looking Diamond Secondary School has a big playground; but what? Would you believe it is surrounded with grass which at some points is above 12 feet! No exaggeration, go and see it for yourselves!  Though it appears to be growing on a mound, matters not. The grass is reaching for the sky. It’s a grass jungle rapidly encroaching the playfield.  So where do the children play? Within the small space in the middle not yet taken over.
Watching the boys – students – playing cricket, each one thinking he has the potential of making the West Indies team, you don’t have to ask the numberless times they are taking a risk carelessly venturing into that jungle to search for/retrieve the ball.  But like all schools, there is an executive body and a P.T.A.  See what I mean, that’s the way we have become.
Frank Fyffe

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