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Jul 05, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
When the government was building the sections of the East Coast Public Road that ended at the Mahaicony Police Station, the areas alongside that road were coconut plantations. As the road works progressed it was observed that house lots were being created on these plantations to the extent that today there is human habitation on lands that run along the sides of that roadway.
It was the same situation when the railway embankment was being constructed. The government expended millions of dollars to have squatters removed from along and alongside the embankment but no sooner was the road completed, persons began to occupy the lands that ran alongside the new road.
New roads are always expected to open up new lands. But this needs not necessarily be for housing and business. There is a real danger in having houses and businesses alongside public roads. It is also dangerous in this modern Guyana where there are many trucks and cars moving at a fast pace along these roads for pedestrians and cyclists to be walking or riding on these carriageways.
Each year dozens of Guyanese lose their lives on our roadways. The bulk of these lives are lost on public roads. Including amongst the lot of persons killed are many children as was the case recently when a schoolchild was killed after being struck by a vehicle. There have been other cases where pedestrians using public roads have been run over by vehicles.
Public highways should not have houses alongside them. When there are houses, there will be persons who have to exit their homes onto the highway. And this increases the chances of these persons being struck down by vehicles on roads that usually have a higher speed limit than ordinary roads. This is one of the reasons why when the railway embankment was built there were sections of that embankment that did not allow bridges to be built that led onto the roadway. Residents would in those cases have to ingress and egress their homes from adjoining streets.
When the East Bank Public Road was being upgraded, there were, as is the case on all of our public roads, homes alongside that road. This column had urged the authorities to prohibit the conversion of these homes into businesses because with business, vehicles would need parking and you cannot have on a major highway, vehicle being parked. Yet quite inexplicably, today more and more businesses are propping up on the East Bank on the most commuted strip between the Harbour Bridge and the Ruimveldt Bypass. Even schools are now being permitted to be established alongside major public roads including the east Bank Public Road and the very narrow Lamaha Street in the city.
A new public road is going to be constructed aback of the East Bank Public Road. The authorities need to ensure that there is no human settlement alongside this road. If persons are allowed to occupy lands alongside the road, it will present problems for the flow of traffic but more importantly it will increase the risk of pedestrians being killed.
There is very little that the authorities can do at the moment about human settlements alongside our existing public roads. The best they can do is to restrict businesses so as to avoid bottlenecks with traffic and obstructions caused by parking.
They can build pavements and walkways where this is possible and even bicycle lanes. These things may help to reduce the number of pedestrians and cyclists killed. But the ultimate solution is to limit human settlement alongside public road because once this happens you will continue to have large numbers of persons killed each year on these roads.
While very little can be done with the present public roads, the authorities should ensure that when they plan new public roads, they ensure that they limit what can be built alongside these new roads.
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May 13, 2024
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