adminThis is fine, and good for safety, since it is so difficult to see lane markings on moonless nights, especially where the shadows of the non-working street lights fall.
There have even been sterling efforts to replace the reflectors marking lanes on some major roads, although these are soon stolen again by those seeking coffin handles and no one seems to be doing research on how to embed them more firmly so they remain and keep the living away from the need for such handles.
But surely, before the paint teams are launched, the roads should be repaired or even resurfaced where the tarmac is in particularly bad shape.
We know that Harare City Council is so broke that it cannot afford to pay its Zesa bills, but Zinara is now, probably slowly, starting to disburse cash and provide equipment.
The gangs who repair the roads are on the city payroll whether they are working on the roads or sitting in the city maintenance yards, and the labour bill must be the largest expense. Gravel, clay and a thin layer of tarmac to surface a patch cannot be in the same league.
There are some really bad patches of bad road. In the city centre, right by where painting teams were at work this weekend, the northern edge of Nelson Mandela Avenue was dug up more than a month ago to lay new water pipes. No one minded the mess then because we all need water.
But the filled trenches are still unsurfaced and unsightly, including the stretch outside Parliament where public ceremonies take place. We know that the fill needs to be compacted and graded before surfacing, but that has been done several times.
Arcturus Road in Greendale is one of those old suburban streets that cries out for remaking now that it is used as a major arterial road. The roadway is simply wrongly engineered for the traffic it now has to carry.
This is not the fault of the city council; it was built when only a few dozen Model Ts used the road each day. But for decades traffic has been much heavier and the sums spent on temporary repairs as the surface breaks up could certainly have been better used for a rebuild.
Last year rebuilding finally started, on the eastern section within Greendale ward. Everyone cheered. More than six months later that fairly short section of road is still closed; the unfortunates living along it still have to use the cycle track, now just a gravel path, to get in and out of their homes, and everyone else has to take long detours.
Surely in these days of almost zero inflation costs can be fixed in advance and balanced against cash available.
All suburbs have some minor roads that seem to have been abandoned. More than half the surfacing has broken up. In some cases some very public-spirited residents have laid brick paving in the worst patches, at their own expense, but often the road is just left abandoned.
We imagine that it will cost far more to rebuild those roads than it would to patch and maintain them.
Airport Road in Hatfield is another example of an uncompleted project in the capital and residents and motorists keep wondering when this stretch of road, which is an eye-opener for visitors to our country, will be completed.
One way out of the mess would be for Zinara to make more money available.
Car owners pay US$60 a year to use all roads, and most spend a lot more than that on a single tank of fuel. A higher fee, so long as the extra money goes on roads not “administration expenses” at Zinara, could be acceptable; or a 1c levy on fuel so those who use the roads pay for them, or some other simple tax.
Insurance costs far more than the licence fee and it is that which makes licence renewals expensive, not the trivial fee of US$5 a month.
We now need urgent debate on costs of maintenance and how to raise that cash. Efficiencies at the municipal level and at Zinara can help, but something more is needed. If it does not come we will soon be driving on painted sand.
Online Reporter