The government does not listen

Oct 17, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The plans to build four-lane bypasses in the city and to widen the country’s public roads to four lanes should be revisited. This is not a decision which has been properly weighed.

As is evident in the decision to build a four lane-road from Conversation Tree to Campbell Avenue and to widen Cemetery Road to four lanes, both in the city, the government made decisions and then commenced consultations. In the case of the former, it is alleged that public consultations only began after mobilisation works had already started.

These types of superficial and meaningless consultations are a sham. They are mainly undertaken to provide information and reduce push-back from members of the public. This, however, is not a new modus operandi of the PPP/C; this is the manner in which the now ruling party has traditionally operated. Building four-lane roadways alongside where people live and do business is a death-trap. Since the widening of the Mandela Avenue, the East Coast Public Road and the West Coast Public Roads there have been a spate of deaths of pedestrians and cyclists.

Four-lane roads encourage speeding and should never be constructed alongside where people live or where there are businesses. There is going to be a high incidence of road fatalities where people are trying to cross a four lane-roadways.

Also, as has been the case with the East Bank Public Road and Sheriff Street four-lane roadway, the cycling and pedestrian lane is being used for customer parking, Spending billions of dollars on these types of roadways amounts to providing asphalted customer parking for businesses.

Guyana’s main public roads were built to connect a string of villages. It means that almost every 50 meters or less there is an intersection. This presents a problem for vehicles exiting a village and having to cross to the opposite end of the four-lane highway.

On the East Coast Demerara Public Road, there is a long stretch between Turkeyen and Annandale in which there are multiple traffic lights to direct the flow of traffic not only along the four-lane roadway but also in and out of many of the villages which run alongside this stretch. Instead of allowing faster traffic, the four-lane East Coast Road actually ends up being not much quicker than using the previous two-lane public road. Now there are plans to extend the Railway Embankment and even talk about it becoming a four-lane roadway. When that roadway was constructed under the Jagan government, there was a report done which was critical of its location. A consultant had actually suggested that given the depths of the villages along the East Coast, that the roadway should have been built further inland as it was too near from the existing public road and two far away from the lower ends of the villages.

The government is now going to spend some US$184M – almost the same sum used to construct the Skeldon Sugar Factory – to expand this road. It would have been far cheaper and of greater utility to have spent this sum on a two-lane road circling the back of the villages. But you cannot raise these issues with the PPP/C. The PPP/C government operates as if its tone deaf to constructive criticisms. So long as suggestions do not emanate from its leadership, they are generally disregarded and rejected.

It would be much better and safer for all concerned if instead of four-land roadways, the government would build circle roads which skirt the settlement areas. This would allow for better traffic flow and avoid creating the death-traps in the form of four-lane roadways.

Instead of a four-lane roadway for Cemetery Road, it would be better if a roundabout was built at the intersection with Mandela Avenue.  Instead of extending the Corentyne Highway, it would be better if a circle road was built behind the villages. This would better alleviate the traffic congestion in areas such as at Rose Hall Town, Port Mourant and Corriverton.

Building wider roads will not solve the road congestion problem. If the government is serious about ensuring a better road transport system, it would take some simpler steps such as prohibiting further commercial development along the country’s main road arteries and in Georgetown, limiting the construction of housing schemes along the East Bank of Demerara and looking at the possibility of mass transit systems, such as light rail from the main housing schemes to the nearest urban centres. But do not dare mention these suggestions to the PPP/C. It is bent on spending the government’s revenues as fast as it can and thus it in conjuring projects quickly and without careful studies. No wonder it appears as if the government is plucking road projects out of a hat. It is.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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