Dear Editor,
A preponderance of vehicles has flooded our roads, and it is only a matter of time before we are saddled with a serious crisis. Definitely there is every need for 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.
Coming out of Diamond Housing Scheme in the morning between say 6am and 8am to get to Georgetown is sheer stress; there is more often than not a traffic jam, which is good for those who have become accustomed to it; they have done 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-and-a-half hours 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 or school to leave home at 5-5.30am for an 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 anything else; most things are contingent on something else, and this is what breeds continuity and propels real progress.
However, for one thing this vehicular railway weaving an artistic ribbon beginning way down at the back of the Diamond Scheme all along the main road, crawls for intervals at a snail’s pace till it comes to a dead stop in the East Bank main road all the way to the city. It creates a lovely pattern, but as someone noted, all beauty isn’t goodness.
There’s one reason that this traffic congestion should be soon attended to: vehicles are coming in as if it is going out of style; everyone with a dollar craves a car, so at the rate they are being acquired with no addition to existing roads, it’s easy to understand the overnight increase in traffic build-up and traffic jams. If Diamond is a microcosm, then this scenario spreads across the coast, and in the event of any serious emergency or crisis – God forbid – there would be a major problem
Oh! en passant: Observe, we have become so accustomed to ridiculous and out-of-place things that they don’t bother us any more. The nice looking Diamond Secondary School has a big playground, but would you believe it is surrounded with grass which at some points is above 12 feet? No exaggeration; go and see it for yourselves. While it appears to be growing on a mound, it matters not that the grass is reaching for the sky; it’s a grass jungle rapidly encroaching on the playfield. So where do the children play? Within the small space in the middle not yet taken over.
Watching the boy students playing cricket, each one thinking he has the potential of making the West Indies team, you don’t have to ask how many times they are taking a risk carelessly venturing into that jungle to retrieve a ball. But like all schools, there is an executive body and a PTA. See what I mean? That’s the way we have become.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
