Garth Rattray | From peak hour to peak day (traffic)

I dedicate this piece to my father (God rest his soul), who was a loyal, patriotic, hard-working, public servant and visionary who wasted his breath on the political bureaucrats of his day. He spent almost his entire working life at the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC). Those were the days when the KSAC, the ‘Corporation’ used to be responsible for the roads and lands, gullies and even the garbage collection and disposal in Kingston and St Andrew.

My father eventually became the city engineer. That post has been defunct. The KSAC is now referred to as the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), and the responsibility for the roads has been taken over by the National Works Agency (NWA).

I mention my father because way back in the 1970s he used to say that, as far as traffic is concerned, “eventually we will have a peak day instead of a peak hour”. Well … we have been having peak traffic days for some time now. And this is unsustainable. For example, he had a lot to do with the rehabilitation of Red Hills Road. I recall how much he begged the Government of the day to make it a four-lane roadway, two in both directions, because he foresaw the need for the expansion, but they flatly refused.

He had ideas for utilising some already owned government lands to add to our roadways. He explained that in certain areas, the strips of lands on either side of our established gullies (they are actually canals) are government lands. He proposed that those lands could be used for the construction of roadways that would run parallel to them and expand our road network. Again, the Government of the day refused to listen. Instead, they allowed many squatter communities to develop along the gullies and now they are inaccessible for use as roadways.

Some other countries were more disciplined about where people could live. In the Philippines, for example, they use those lands adjacent to their canals to construct roadways. In fact, when they needed more roads, they covered (constructed roads above) some canals. Jamaica will never seek to make use of those lands because displacing the squatters will have political consequences.

ALLEVIATE TRAFFIC

My father had an idea to alleviate traffic in the city. He thought of having a transport hub with radiating arterial roads that are linked to a circumferential highway of sorts all around the city. People would be able to park their vehicles at designated areas and take shuttles into the heart of the city. This would significantly reduce traffic congestion and the consequences that it has.

I vividly recall that during the massive undertaking of rehabilitating the Hagley Park Road corridor, it occurred to me that all that work was only a very temporary fix for a serious and burgeoning problem. Already, only a few short years after the completion of the project, Hagley Park Road is often gridlocked in several sections. The work certainly helped a lot, but we are about to outgrow it, and when we do, what’s next?

There are many ills associated with congestion on our roads. Time is wasted sitting in a sea of stationary or slowly moving motor vehicles. Precious and expensive fuel is wasted, burnt off while throttling and creeping along in serpentine traffic lines. Tons of toxic fumes and smoke are expelled into our environment. Our city is heated up by the hundreds of thousands of internal combustion engines clustered in urban areas. People are forced to sit, inactive and restrained, for hours most days. They become irritable, hostile, impatient, volatile, aggressive, and unruly.

The traffic congestion poses a very serious impediment to emergency vehicles. Ambulances, fire trucks, and the police have a terrible time trying to drive through the innumerable vehicles sitting in traffic. Obviously, they lose valuable time just trying to go from point A to point B. When property and lives are at stake, seconds and minutes are critical. I am sure that people are suffering, and perhaps even dying, because of the delays caused by traffic jams.

CONGESTION

Every time that anyone ventures on to our roadways, the congestion makes the journey arduous and very time-consuming. It can take hours to get around the city. Because their livelihood depends on the number of passengers that they can move in one day, route taxicabs, minibuses, and Coaster buses drive on the soft or hard shoulder to circumvent traffic. They create new lanes to overtake long lines of traffic. And they ignore the rules of the road by which most of us must abide.

Because of the widespread violation of the rules of the road by people in the public transport business, several other road users and even the police (who are not involved in responding to any emergency) can be seen patterning the driving of the disorderly public transport operators.

Our ability to expand and build roads is limited. In 2023, there were 615,486 motor vehicles inspected by the Island Traffic Authority (island-wide). Unexamined vehicles are not accounted for. Others are imported and will join the throng of vehicles on our roads.

With the continuous need for motor vehicles, we will be running out of roads in the near future… gridlock will be common. The solution lies in much better public transport facilities to reduce the need for so many private motor vehicles.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com