“Fong Kong”- cars now outnumber new cars on Gaborone roads. These affordable imports seem to have strengthened Batswana’s love affair with cars, leading to many traffic problems.
Will the increase in petrol prices limit the use of this CO2 spitting marvels and save our city from suffocating, or do we need more interventions to stop the unbridled growth of car numbers on our roads?
Why are we showing off our wheels, while in most parts of the world, people have started selling their cars and replacing them with bicycles?
Gaborone has reached a stage where walking has become faster than driving during peak hours. Driving is no longer working for us, but we remain attached to our cars and refuse to change our habits.
Is is simply a matter of old habits die hard?
Or are we determined to love our cars at all cost.
A new report on the Gaborone traffic study which was conducted by Canadian consultants, was released recently.
Government officials refer to it as the “first” multi-modal traffic study made for Gaborone, feigning amnesia that a similar study was made in 2010.
Where the 2010 Gaborone study, by a consortium of South-African and Spanish engineers, came with solutions addressing the reasons for the traffic situation, the new study, is concentrating on the symptoms of the traffic problem and attempting to attend to those.
The Canadian consultants’ study meticulously details how the traffic problem should be addressed. They do so by studying every existing traffic problem and proposing solutions for every affected intersection.
Whereas the SA and Spanish consultants addressed the reasons for our high volume of traffic, the new study attaches less importance thereto and tries to come up with solutions to resolve the existing traffic problems. It accepts the high levels of traffic as a given, and suggests solutions thereto.
It feels like the old study tried to cure the brain tumour, while the new study tries to stop the headache caused by the brain tumour.
It stands to logic that Botswana should be choosing brain surgery over aspirin. Officials are however rejecting findings of the first study and wishing the report away.
Millions of tax-money later, officials are having to contend with the inconvenient truth. Much as the study findings presented officials with what they needed to know, it was not what they wanted to hear. Now the very existence of the study is denied. The study was never made. Engineers at the ministry who started working there after 2010 do not even know of the existence of the first study.
It is thus safe to conclude that responsible authorities do not heed advice unless it tells them to do what they want to do. They are hell bent on protecting the car as a mere symbol of wealth, a means to separate the rich from the poor.
The bigger the car, the weightier the esteem. The car generates as much pollution as the respect. That pungent stench of burning gasoline is supposed to be the sweet smell of success, or at least according to official actions or inactions.
The authorities, politicians, are following what the people want, so they tell us. Do we really like spending millions on road upgrades rather than on schools, clinics, teachers…. Do we really prefer polluting our Gaborone, filling up our city with wide strips of concrete that heat it up?
We would hope that this is not the case but…
How is the rest of the world tackling high traffic volumes?
They do not widen or upgrade their road network, they reduce the traffic volumes by :
1. Gaborone has a severe traffic problem for about 5 hours every working day. Only during the 5 peak hours do we experience traffic problems. Avoiding the peak hour is thus a priority and even better, making sure there is no peak hour is the solution.
With roughly 50% of cars in Gaborone owned by government employees, re-arranging their working hours can instantly do away with the peak hour traffic.
Making ministries to start and stop working at different times during the day will, without spending as much as one Thebe, do away with peak traffic congestions. Let the ministries all start at different times varying from say 07H00 till 0900.
The mad rush to all arrive at the same spot, at the same time is completely artificial and can be changed by the stroke of a pen.
If we would do the same thing for schools, we would be surprised at how swiftly traffic jams in Gaborone would vanish.
The private sector is moving away from the enforcement of starting and stopping time and embraces Flexi-time, or even better, they simply work from home, if possible.
There is no reason whatsoever why we should all go to the same place at the same time, but that is what we all keep doing.
2. Government, sometimes in the early sixties of last century, decided to group all their offices in a Government Enclave. This was then maybe the right decision as people like the then President, Seretse Khama, walked from the State House to his offices.
What if Government were to spread their offices throughout town, in a concerted and well co-ordinated effort to reduce (peak) traffic?
This should not cost anything, as the Government Enclave could be redeveloped for mixed development and become a precious beautiful mixed development in the heart of our Capital.
In lieu of costing monies, this would generate considerable income and further reduce (peak) traffic.
3. Introduce a pollution tax by increasing the license fees for cars. With every fourth inhabitant of the country owning a car, Botswana ranks amongst the countries with the highest car ownership in the world.
Government should charge considerably more for the first license fee and charge even more for the second license fee. Make owning a third car prohibitive by charging a punitive license fee. This will reduce car ownership and increase government’s income, which can then be used to further fight pollution in the Capital.
4. Stop the urban sprawl by allowing intensification of land use and promote mixed zoning. This will stop the ever growing traffic going from one zone to the next. If you can work, entertain and live in the same building, there is no need for transport at all.
Since I live on top of the Molapo Mall, I reduced my annual driving from 25,000Km to just under 2,000Km per year.
That means that :
• I saved about P27,600 last year on petrol alone.
• I saved an estimated similar amount on car maintenance.
• I saved Botswana P27,600 on foreign currency.
• I saved an estimated 760 hours wasted driving, being able to produce goods rather than wasting monies. If I were to use that time productively we will considerably improve this countries productivity!
• I reduced my CO2 footprint by about 4.6 tons annually. Gaborone’s pollution comes for 32.6% from cars.
• The monies personally saved are more than the annual salary earned by 15% of the Gaborone population.
Some, mainly older, planners still refuse to accept that mixed zoning reduces traffic. They prefer us to keep on driving from our house, to school, to work, to shop, to entertain…We are still dealing with scenarios like the baker having to life in a residential area, bake his bread in an industrial area and having to sell his bread in a commercial area.
That baker spends more time in his car than baking bread….
5. Promote the use of non-motorised traffic. People walking, or using bicycles are healthier and do not pollute the city, but we give them no space whatsoever. Why are we giving cars ALL the space on our roads and nothing to pedestrians and cyclists? Only one in four inhabitants of Gaborone own a car ,but we give them nearly 100% of the road space.
What if we were to be democratic and give space depending on demographics. Give cars a quarter of the road space and reserve 75% for the pedestrians, cyclists and public transport?
Up to 80% of cars, in peak traffic, transport one person, but they take as much space as 8 people in a communal bus.
6. Cars are filling our city and taking enormous amounts of useful space, further increasing the need to drive…as we all need more space to park the car.
If we were to live on an average plot to 400m2, a total of 10% thereof is required to drive the car onto the plot and park it.
Space for cars in a shopping mall is at least 50% of the available land!
And we use our cars, on average, less than 6.5% of the time! Which means we allocate 10% of our residential land to a thing that we use 6.5% of the time…
Gaborone is , when taking into account the roads network, allocating close to 50% of its land, to cars. We have road servitudes of up to 61M wide!
Cape Town, on the other hand, introduced their new traffic policy and forbids any parking bays at new developments in their CBD. You can build a hotel or a mall in the CBD, as long as you are NOT providing any parking bays!
By not providing parking spaces, the Cape Town planners intensify land use and reduce traffic by forcing people to use non-motorised traffic or public transport.
7. Free public transport.
Several countries are testing free transport.
Paris makes all public transport freely available to students and retirees, as a test case before making it entirely free.
Those amongst you that think this is insane, think again. It is cheaper than adding and maintaining more road infrastructure.
By way of example :
The three bridges being build right now in Gaborone, cost more than buying every inhabitant of Gaborone a new bicycle.
Students would not complain about the cost of the taxi and poor people would reach their destination for free and the city would get rid of the tons of CO2 that are slowly suffocating its population…
So why are we not doing any of the above?
I’d be interested to find out from you.
I for one am very happy that I no longer sit in the daily traffic jam.
I walk from Molapo Crossing to the CBD and beat the cars during peak hours….
