Antidote to Harare’s traffic headache does not cost anything...
ROAD traffic congestion in the City of Harare has degenerated into a menace of overwhelming proportions.
When caught up in congestion, a lot of business time is lost. Business schedules, even flights at RGM International Airport are missed.
Tourists are discouraged. Time is an economic resource. The “rush” in the minds of road users can eventually lead to mental [psychological] health complications. Ambulances, fire brigades and State Motorcades often get caught up in the road traffic congestion melee.
Minor road traffic collisions can happen due to congestion fatigue especially involving manual transmission vehicles [tedious shifting of gears] and impatient motorists taking risks, precariously weaving through traffic. Eruption of road rage and blame game are not uncommon, often resulting in fist fights. Driver concentration [full application of mind and body to a particular endeavour to the complete exclusion of everything else not related to that endeavour, according to the road craft manual] is impaired.
The temptation to speed after the delays in congestion is invariably high. Production and productivity are negatively affected. Responsible authorities and stakeholders [road users] appear to brood no solution to the congestion crisis or have resigned to fate. Some lazy workers are deliberately designing to report late for work blaming congestion. This is detrimental to our national campaign of transforming Zimbabwe’s economy into a sustainable prosperous upper-middle income economy by 2028.
The road traffic congestion problem in Harare can be here to stay if responsible authorities and all road users are not “vaccinated” against the mess.
The “vaccine” to ease the road traffic congestion does not cost any money, but brains. I am using the word “vaccination” deliberately. This implies a deliberate cognitive process of uprooting negative road user attitudes, replacing them with heritage-based overnight solutions [vaccine] to ease congestion in Harare, common sense driving.
Roads and cars have no brains but road planners and users have, and must use them. Like I always say, in this Second Republic of Zimbabwe, it is no longer fashionable to think outside the box but to throw the box away completely and start thinking afresh. Authorities from the old school of the “IT CAN’T” mindset must be inoculated to embrace progressive states of mind or quit shop. A number of short to medium-term solutions can be adopted to ease the road traffic congestion in Harare.
The road traffic rule book, the Highway Code, must incorporate road traffic congestion management as taught content. So far the Code is silent on how a driver must help ease congestion through appropriate navigation, communication, courtesy and coordination.
Courtesy at intersections is more effective in congested traffic than the signs and traffic controls. You are facing a Give Way sign, you won’t be given the way unless you plead with drivers of cross - traffic to be humane enough and yield precedence for you or there are traffic police officials or road traffic wardens controlling traffic.
It is time the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe invested in road traffic wardens who must join the traffic police at intersections to control traffic. This is an international best practice. National development Strategy 1 [NDS1] speaks to cross-cutting development issues. This is one of them. The related enabling legal framework can easily be constituted since it is a domestic remedy.
It is a fact that the carrying capacity of our Harare road network system, designed during the colonial epoch with astonishing myopia, was long exceeded due to rapid motorisation.
Separation of traffic is a key de-congestion driver. At strategic entry points into the city, traffic must be separated. For example, along Simon Mazorodze, just after Remembrance Drive, all private vehicles must be asked to proceed into town via Rotten Row into Jason Moyo then Nelson Mandela whereas the public-passenger carrying vehicles must proceed through the fly-over to town.
The same can apply to other roads leading into town. Driver lane discipline/single file driving is crucial. Where there is a dual-carriageway, like Samora Machel in and out of town, drivers MUST always drive left and overtake right. Minimum speed limit must be enforced on drivers who are terribly too slow in the right lane and hence cause congestion.
Heavy goods vehicles are already required by law to avoid the Central Business District [CBD] unless when loading and off-loading. Pedestrian fly-overs like the one along Speke Avenue must be the order of the city, effectively separating vehicular and human traffic thereby solving the distracted jay-walking problem. Vendors and beggars must only ply their trade at designated points, away from road pavements and intersections.
The Covid 19 outbreak taught the labour industry that certain work, especially involving the internet of things, accounting, innovation, science and technology development, can be done from home and meetings can be held virtually unless when interpersonal exchange is absolutely imperative. Companies must make bold and decisive action in this favour.
In addition, relocation and decentralisation of office space from CBD are the way to go especially for some home affairs services like registration of births and deaths as well as application for passports. Employers, especially the largest employer, the Public Service Commission, must stagger the times that workers start and end work.
In the fray of congestion, it is not necessary that all workers start work at 8am and end at 4pm. Akin to hot-sitting in schools, while some workers start work at 0800hrs, other can start at 1000hrs and 1200hrs. It will be effective since travel times to and fro work will also be staggered. The model is working internationally. Even if the model is not adopted, today some workers start work at 0745hrs and still return home at 2000hrs or even 2100hrs due to paralysing congestion. Workers in the informal sector can also easily implement this model.
Into the bargain, when Harare receives even the slightest of showers, road traffic literally locks and stands still. This is largely due to some vehicles not fit to be driven in the rain: defective windshield wipers, windscreen fogging to the extent that some drivers open front windows and drive mopping the windscreen with cloth, inadequate illumination by headlights, and worn out brakes; and some drivers not fit to be driving in the rain: inexperience, panic, lack of knowledge on how to operate demisters on dashboards, and fear associated with unlicensed and unauthorized driving. Limited visibility when it is raining is also another factor which forces drivers to slow down and hence hog traffic.
Taken into serious perspective, such road traffic ‘vaccines’ can really ease the road traffic congestion menace in Harare.
◆ Tatenda Chinoda is a veteran defensive driving instructor and a Roads4Life Champion for the African Region. +263772966075 or tatenda.chinoda@yahoo.com