Garth Rattray

Our ever-worsening traffic woes are so blatant and irksome to everyone that I feel it may be superfluous for me to comment on the situation. We're all frustrated with the crippling traffic congestion. It's obvious that we now have a 'peak day' instead of just peak hours. This term was coined by Dr. L. George Rattray (my father), as he forewarned of an impending serious traffic problem when he was the city engineer for the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation. Myopic minds nixed his repeated pleas to convert major roadways into two or even three lanes in either direction.

They never saw the wisdom of expanding our road network by strategically constructing roadways parallel with and juxtaposed to existing gullies. Gully squatter settlements are now rife but, that reserved three to six or 10 metres of government-owned land would have saved us many millions in land acquisition and the cost of drainage infrastructure (a gentle slope towards the gully would assure proper drainage). He even envisioned a circumferential city arterial highway with flyovers and inward radiating (access) roads. How we wish we had them now. Politicised penny-wise and pound-foolish bureaucrats cited inadequate funds and failed to see what he saw with prophetic clarity over a quarter of a century ago - the looming explosion of motor vehicles racing towards us from a futuristic horizon.

Creeping and throttling in our motor vehicles

I'm not going to comment on those long- gone relatively 'cheap days'. However the cost of expanding our roadways is now exorbitant, we need to compare it to the many millions of dollars of precious foreign exchange being wasted on fuel that literally goes up in smoke as we sit in our motor vehicles creeping and throttling for hours in long traffic lines five or six days of the week. I've actually watched helplessly as my fuel gauge slowly migrated downwards. Exhaust-poisoned air, impatient road hogs, prematurely worn engines, fatigued and frayed nerves are now the order of the day.

Why should I bother to say anything to the authorities about what occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday November 13 when the traffic snarl reached a crescendo? Some gangs of youths operating off Waltham Park Road, barricaded the entrances to several roads leading off the main thoroughfare and opportunistically extorted 'tolls' (graded according to the size of the vehicle) from all motorists wishing to use their communities as short-cuts in an attempt to circumvent the gridlock. It's only a matter of time before those same gangs of youths rob or kill motorists seeking shortcuts through their communities. This emerging illegal 'toll' enterprise will probably be ignored until it costs us a few innocent lives.

Some of our bright, under-utilised researchers should conduct a study of the cost of fuel wasted, the ensuing environmental damage, the health problems and the cumulative man hours lost because of interminable traffic lines. They should then compare that to the cost of constructing the roadways necessary to handle our vehicular burden. Has anyone examined the feasibility of staggering business and school hours to facilitate smooth traffic run-off? It would be interesting to see how much time and money we would save.

The powers-that-be know full well that traffic jams not only waste fuel and man hours, but also rob us of recreation time, social interaction time and family time. However, since no long-term master plan to tame this serious and worsening problem has been forthcoming, it doesn't appear to be a priority and therefore undeserving of a comment from anyone, including me.