Growing hot - the cost of transportation planning in a small developing state
It was only a decade after, but my first trip back to Guyana produced the unanticipated. The roads of downtown Georgetown were more congested and, surprisingly, other points in the nation’s simple road network showed the same symptom. Never before did it require fifteen minutes on any day to drive between Rose Hall Town and neighbouring Port Mourant, for example. And the East Bank Demerara road, the corridor that every visitor to Guyana must use, had an unwelcome taste of congestion and law breaking. The shock was worse considering two realities, which ought to have worked in the opposite direction. First, the population of Guyana remained flat and second, the price of a vehicles remained high, yet the automobile count climbed.
What could be some of the reasons for so many vehicles on the road despite the presence of supposedly countervailing factors? The replacement of minibuses by cars on some routes? Disaffection with public transport? A fancy for car ownership? The availability of hire purchase options for vehicles? “Development” and an increased desire for creature comforts? Climate change coupled with a decline in active transportation?
A generation has not past, but the practice of walking or cycling to and from school, which was the daily routine for students and/or their parents, has mostly evaporated. In Region Six, those modes have been replaced by hire car “short drops.” I think of the expatriates on assignment in the country who ride or walk and wonder if there are lessons in that for us.
This writer is in New York, where the City and State are encouraging people to use more active transport (walking and biking), public transport, and electric vehicles to benefit their health, pockets, and the shared air. Yes, parts of the year are cooler than in most of Guyana, but air will not get cooler by turning to cars or air conditioning but rather through managing how we build, travel, live, and let live. In case you were wondering, the local climate had perceptibly warmed over the last two decades, less than half a generation! The congestion we see and the heat we feel are in part self-inflicted. Do we suppose that we could drive our way out of the heat and congestion without addressing the source?
Last year, I spent a few days in Georgetown. Throughout, people advised me on how to get around by taxi but I walked to each of my appointments. I had a sun
hat and sandals, but no parasol, though that would have been cool. Walking allowed me freedom, time and space to stop, observe, take pictures, and relish a chilled sugarcane juice, all while saving myself a few thousand dollars and avoiding heating the air around. There were some surprises. I was a loner - there were few people walking or cycling the sunny streets. Plus, the density of vehicles on streets and parapets has increased – the once plentiful public space available for walking is now full, encumbered by cars parked along the streets. And, though the case for it is obvious, there is a dearth of street trees in The Garden City. Dual carriageway avenues with pedestrian paths in between had none, few, or unmaintained trees offering little invitation of shade or aesthetics to anyone who might contemplate walking or sitting. What seems to have happened over the years is that trees were not being replaced as they died. And there is no known program to grow the urban tree cover, not even along the new medians and roundabouts being constructed.
And there are some broader ironies. For a small country, the level of congestion on the coast is avoidably high. So much planning and infrastructure has historically concentrated on the coastal plain. Rather than building strategically elsewhere, successive administrations have invested public funds to build on the coast, unmindful of the opportunity available to use it to ease the congestion. What’s more, instead of planning new travel routes to cater for the increased motorized traffic, policy makers have resorted to expanding the width of existing roadways. I use the example of the Corentyne road to illustrate some of the problems with that approach.
It has been reported that policymakers want to expand the sole main road through Region 6 by widening it to four lanes. While adding more lanes to existing roads would be more economical to build than creating new roads, that approach has several costs. Firstly, when an incident brings traffic to a halt or creates a bottleneck, the additional lanes would do less to ease congestion than if drivers had the option to take an alternative route.
Secondly, even if there is room to expand, the road would get too close to people’s homes in many places and burden residents with multiple extrinsic costs, which drivers would not be paying for. On the increase side these costs include higher noise, dust, tailpipe emissions, air temperature, traffic fatalities (both human and animal), illnesses, travel costs, and contaminated runoff. On the decrease side the costs include reduced aesthetics, drainage, sleep comfort, and opportunities for active travel (foot, bicycle, or animal power). Paradoxically, just a few decades ago the government had contracted out the resurfacing of the road that resulted in one that was cheaper to do but narrower by up to four feet on each side, leaving the road dangerous to pedestrians in many places. Why neither the project managers nor the rural population complained is now a piece of costly history. And, consider the following two cases. A prominent Common Entrance teacher was jogging when a minibus hit him and dragged him under the vehicle for some distance before his mangled and burnt body was retrieved. A young man was walking home from early morning prayers at the masjid when he was hit and killed by a car. These things were unheard of three decades ago and their implications are very serious for people wanting to go about living a healthy life. All over the world, people use road parapets, pavements and sidewalks for walking and jogging. The fact that these two souls were lost doing that means that the roads are no longer as safe but are now only suited to a single use category – motorized traffic. For their own safety, health, and economic wellbeing, citizens of Region 6 should oppose any widening of the road to four-lane traffic. A better option would be to build a separate, alternative route. Residents should also petition for the sand trucks racing the clock day and night to be monitored so they respect the speed limit before they likely kill people in ways worse than the two mentioned above.
Transportation planning is intertwined with other issues and can have undesirable reinforcing feedbacks. As mentioned in the Corentyne example above, its impacts are on many sectors. Consider the following feedback loops. As Guyana’s climate warms, more people would want to drive rather than walk, cycle, or stand on the road waiting for public transportation. This increases vehicular traffic, which directly increases emissions, creates a need for more roads, and increases the amount of radiative heat from the additional vehicles and hard surfaces, thereby raising temperatures, and the cycle repeats itself. Another feedback loop pertains to safety – as more people fear for their safety, fewer people would walk or cycle leading to more vehicles on the road, which in turn increases road accidents, and the cycle repeats itself. Both of these feedback loops increase the cost of travel and directly and indirectly add to the cost of living. Public policy can break both of these vicious cycles. Guyana still has a low cost of living, but that metric has been trending upwards and current global inflation and a local “development curse” scenario would only augment the trend. Astute economic management at the levels of both government and households can restrain this growing economic threat.
Needed is an integrated development plan broken down by sector that considers all the threats and needs of the country, including the closely linked building and transportation sectors and that would address congestion and the feedback loops that worsen existing problems. I lived in Costa Rica and enjoyed travelling by bus wherever we went. I also lived in oil-reliant Brunei, but public transport was almost non-existent. Not far away, densely populated Singapore and Hong Kong have two of the best public transit systems in the world. The benefits of public transit for alleviating congestion and air pollution are well known. But there are personal benefits too, like time to read or take a nap, the avoided stress of driving, opportunities for social interaction, and lower travel cost. Guyana once had an orderly system of public transportation based on scheduled service. The opportunity exists to make that possible again and, in doing so, further the goals of efficiency, economic gain, safety, public health, and disrupting the vicious cycle that is warming the local climate.