Guyana’s traffic crisis: the river route we’re ignoring

Oct 28, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

As we build more roads, we are paving the way for more gridlock. The Demerara River offers a faster, cheaper, and smarter solution.

Guyana is stuck in traffic. Anyone who has braved the East Bank Demerara corridor during peak hours knows the daily reality: a frustrating, costly, and polluting standstill. As the nation rides the wave of its unprecedented economic growth, our approach to traffic management is seriously lacking the data for improvement, keeping us dangerously stuck in the past.  Let’s think out of the box, by putting the brakes on the loss of valuable, productive time.

Let’s give our citizens more quality and leisure time by improving their lives with “simple effective solutions “The prevailing solution—building and widening roads—is a textbook example of short-term thinking that, paradoxically, fuels the very problem it seeks to solve. Every new lane simply encourages more car ownership, you build the roads, they will buy the vehicles, leading to more congestion and more pollution.

While the exploratory stage of a light rail system is a commendable long-term vision, it is fraught with logistical hurdles, immense costs, and timelines that are likely to stretch for a decade or more. Guyanese commuters need relief now, and our planners need a pragmatic vision that leverages an existing, underutilized asset: the Demerara River.

The Perfect Storm on the East Bank

The East Bank Demerara roadway is the nation’s most critical economic artery, and it is failing under the strain. The current widening project, plagued by poor traffic management, has turned a chronic problem into an acute crisis. But even when completed, this wider road will be insufficient. We are overlooking two seismic shifts:

1. Interior Traffic: This corridor is the main conduit for the vast resources extracted from the interior. Expansion of extraction brings more commercial congestion. The traffic from heavy-duty trucks alone is immense and damaging to the road infrastructure.
2. The Brazil Link: The imminent completion of the roadway linking to Brazil will unleash a new wave of trade and leisure travel between Georgetown and Boa Vista. The current planning appears to have no data-driven traffic survey to account for this incoming tsunami of vehicles.

This is a perfect storm in the making, and it can be met with a solution from the last century. “Old is Gold” still holds true.

A readily available solution: The Demerara River Corridor

We have a solution flowing right past us. Instead of just pouring concrete, we should be harnessing the river. A modern, high-speed ferry service operating from the Stabroek Stelling to the Timerhi Docks, with designated stops along the route, would create an entirely new, efficient, and congestion-free corridor.

The model is simple and proven:

• Park-and-Ride: Citizens would drive to parking lots near river stops and take a fast, reliable ferry to their destination, drastically reducing the number of cars on the road.
• Cargo Relocation: Designated loading and staging areas would allow industrial and commercial cargo to be moved by barge, immediately removing a significant number of heavy-duty trucks from the roadway, ensuring its longevity. We are already doing this to move materials between the East and West Bank; it’s time to scale it into a formal, integrated system.

The infrastructural build-out for ferry stelling and parking lots is far less disruptive, can be achieved in a fraction of the time, and is exponentially more cost-effective than a light rail network. This system could be piloted on the East Bank and seamlessly replicated on the West Bank.

A Global Blueprint for Success

This is not a theoretical exercise. Many countries successfully utilize river transport to solve modern urban challenges.

• NYC Ferry Public Transit (5 Boroughs) 6 routes connecting 25 landings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island caters to over 25,000 daily commuters on weekdays, 35,000— 40,000 daily on weekends with leisure travellers.
• Thailand: Bangkok’s extensive network of Chao Phraya River ferries is a vital, high-speed component of the city’s transit system, moving millions of commuters past gridlocked streets.
• United Kingdom: London’s Thames Clippers provide a reliable and popular commuter service, seamlessly integrated with the city’s bus and tube network.
• Canada: Vancouver’s SeaBus is an iconic ferry service connecting the city center to the North Shore, carrying over 20,000 passengers daily and being a cornerstone of the regional transit plan

The data is there to support the implementation, with the will, the want can be met.

The blueprint for success exists; we simply need the foresight to adapt it to our context.

A call for visionary leadership

Our powerbrokers and planners must look beyond the asphalt. The pursuit of wider roads is a race we cannot win. We must invest in a multi-modal transport system that includes the untapped potential of our rivers.

Implementing a modern river transport system is not just about avoiding traffic; it is about building a more sustainable, efficient, and resilient Guyana. It is a readily achievable solution that can provide immediate relief while serving the nation for generations to come. Let’s stop being stuck on the roads and start moving on the river.

Sincerely,

Hemdutt Kumar

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