Traffic congestion in cities the world over is a problem many people fail to cope with. During peak hours the demand for road space become excessive with the situation being exacerbated by rude and primitive drivers who are yet to metamorphose into fully developed human beings. Such bad behaviours on the roads lead to incidents that have the potential to hold up traffic for longer periods.
The truth is that the length of time wasted in traffic daily is often longer than it is thought. On days the law enforcements agents assigned to control the flow of traffic at selected intersections decide to stay, life for motorists and commuters literally turn upside down. It is common knowledge that the Botswana Police Service is grossly under-resourced in comparison to other law enforcement agencies in the country.
In fact, the Botswana Police have had to depend on the benevolence of the Botswana Defence Force to carry out their normal policing operations including traffic-related operations. As a result of a shrinking budget owing to declining government revenues and a political leadership that favours the other law enforcements agencies, the situation has become pathetic implying that the Botswana Police Service traffic operations are compromised.
On the other hand, the number of vehicles on our roads has increased tremendously and will continue to do so in the coming years due to mass ownership stimulated by the acquisition of affordable vehicles imported from Asia and Europe. However, our roads have not been designed to take in the huge volume of traffic already on them. Most of them are characterized by poor road engineering and designs with unacceptably narrow lane widths and dangerous intersections.
Batswana’s lifestyles are rapidly changing such that a majority of adults (salaried and non-salaried) have a private vehicle or more they use for personal transport to work and run other errands. Fundamentally, people are often required to move almost at the same time each day to work and school. Perhaps it is by coincidence that the school system and government operations require that learners go to school almost at the same time as the majority of those who go to work.
Similarly, and unlike in New York (the City that never sleeps) majority of people in Botswana run their personal errands during the day and almost about the same hours with scholars and workers. Since a majority of workers have private vehicles, they prefer to use them for transport mainly because the public transport system is a joke. Those who use it do so precisely because they do not have an alternative otherwise they would have long run away from the obvious inconvenience.
Private vehicles are preferred by many people for reasons of convenience in trip timing and flexibility in that it allows one to undertake multiple tasks on a single trip including skipping work to do mischief. Essentially, as household incomes rise – however modest ÔÇô more and more people will afford ownership of one or more vehicles irrespective of quality. Such new owners will add to the already unbearable traffic logjam. This means that rather than abating, traffic congestion is intensifying and nearing crisis levels.
Admittedly, this problem is severe in other countries with huge populations and higher incomes. However, in spite of Botswana’s small population and vulgar incomes, traffic congestion in Botswana is unacceptable and chaotic mainly because our roads designs are awkward having been planned to accommodate few vehicles belonging to the few wealthy families. The vehicle boom fuelled by imported vehicles from Asia and Europe merely exposed the institutional biases and our wicked planning horizons.
In effect, traffic congestion is here to stay on account of changes in lifestyles as a result of economic prosperity, however modest, and increasing population on the one and declining government revenues on the other. Declining revenues make it hard for authorities to expand and re-align our roads to accommodate the large numbers of vehicles. In any case, expanding roads capacity would prove costly since it would entail relocating residential buildings and other infrastructure to pave way for wider roads.
This therefore means that government and relevant stakeholders must necessarily improvise and devise coping mechanism. One such tried and tested strategy has been the use of traffic police officers to control the flow of traffic at notorious intersections. The presence of law enforcement agents on select intersections in major places during peak hours has helped in saving valuable hours that would otherwise be lost in traffic by workers, by ensuring smooth and incident-free flow of traffic.
However, outside of peak hours, the roadways are governed by the law of the jungle with some motorists behaving like human beings reverting into earlier primitive forms. There is often complete lawlessness, bully driving and a ruthless disregard for ethics of civilization by some wealthy scoundrels.
While improved public transport system would motivate some commuters to switch to public transportation, the reality is that private vehicles for personal transport remain a far better option for reasons of convenience and social status. In effect, the challenge of traffic congestion cannot be eliminated by any one single intervention let alone a combination of them, hence the need to learn to live with it. However, there is a dire need to find workable and sustainable ways to manage it so that the situation does not degenerate into a jungle where barbarians reign.
As has already been stated, the placement of police officers at selected intersections during peak hours has helped ensure better traffic flow but only at peak times. However, this is proving unsustainable given dwindling resources allotted to the Botswana Police Service. It is against this background that the Badge of Courage calls on the Government of Botswana to consider introducing Road Marshals to help in the controlling the flow of traffic in cities and major highways.
In cities, the Marshals would be tasked to ensure smooth flow of traffic during peak and off peak hours. They would be adequately trained and legally empowered to perform certain traffic control duties that are normally performed by the traffic police officers. The Marshals would be tasked to clear incidents that hold up traffic by working closely together with the traffic section of the Botswana Police Services and other stakeholders. They will ensure that at all times such incidents are cleared expeditiously to bring traffic back to normal flow as quickly as possible.
At present, incidents such as minor accidents, vehicle breakdown, stray cattle, animated goats, rogue motorists, and so forth can hold up traffic for extended periods before traffic authorities, who are often thin on ground, intervene. The deployment of Road Marshals on our roads during working hours and especially on high highways during holidays is intended to address this problem by ensuring that traffic-blocking incidents and accidents are responded to promptly.
The presence of Road Marshals throughout the day and almost everywhere would further ensure that road users are well behaved and abide by traffic rules and regulations at all times and not during peak hours only. This will in the long run cultivate positive driver habits among many motorists and help them change the way they think about road safety. An additional benefit from the proposed arrangement would be that it would free traffic police officers from doing trivial traffic duties such as ejecting goats from driveways thus allowing them to focus on serious road incidents and other critical police operations.
At present, the government annually sets aside huge sums of money for Ipelegeng program whose workers spend the better part of their working hours sleeping under the trees they are expected to trim or cut down. Thus, the Ipelegeng program should be transformed in such a way that it would have a component for Road Marshals appropriately managed by the traffic section of the Botswana Police Service.
This essay acknowledges that traffic congestion in Botswana is inevitable and perhaps impossible to eliminate. However, it can and should be managed by introducing Road Marshals thus making traffic congestion a somewhat enjoyable and accident-free daily experience.
