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East Bank ‘Highway’ and the Police role
DEAR EDITOR,
I wish to share the known frustration on the traffic situation and the role of the police on the East Bank ‘Highway’.
It must be a daunting task for the Police to execute traffic control measures on the road, not to take away from their responsibility, but the design lacks any kind of rational thinking that I can see.
I would share my observation from DDL junction to Diamond Scheme. The road has no area to do a U-turn. There is an open space in front of Diamond Hospital with signs erected to deter turning there. Yet, hundreds of mini bus drivers, taxi drivers and other road users turn there.
Here is where the police come in; seldom do they pull in drivers for making that turn, but other times they raise their hands to the known mini bus drivers and taxi drivers. This is the regular practice on the East Bank ‘Highway’ – the hot plate buses and ‘regular boy’ taxi drivers get a free pass in breaking the law, while the ordinary citizens get the penalties for doing what they are doing.
It brings me to the design of the road, and here is where I feel pity for police. There is no U-turn area on the stretch of road highlighted above. You have to ‘thief a turn’ if no police are around or go in Diamond Scheme come back and join the traffic or go further up in Grove and ‘thief a turn’ there.
For a highway that has residents and businesses on both side of the road, I wonder what thinking went into this. They also have concrete shoulders on both sides of the road, so when stops are made directly on the highway, one lane of traffic is blocked until the driver moves or you go over to the other lane.
The situation at Diamond junction is an absolute disaster in design and thinking. Imagine residents of one of the largest housing schemes flowing through one little passageway to get onto the highway. It is ridiculous. What is even more ridiculous is the number of years this is going on without anybody in Government or authority seeking to implement some kind of solution.
I am aware this Government was looking into a bypass, but was hampered by a private businessman having procured the government reserve where it was intended to go. Whatever happened to the land commission to investigate this matter and seek a resolution? This is for a national good and I am sure some compromise can be made.
I am so disturbed by the lack of basic things that continued to elude authorities that affect the daily lives of people in this country, this list can be countless.
Yours truly,
R. Saghar
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