adminentering the city centre. The press of traffic in the evening now imposes impossible strains.
These were highlighted last week, on a wet late afternoon when a massive gridlock encompassed vast swathes of the city centre and it took some drivers up to two hours to exit the CBD.
The biggest single choke point is the western exit from the city centre by way of Jason Moyo Avenue. This is the only western route out of the southern half of the city centre since the conversion of Robert Mugabe Road into a one-way east-running street from Rotten Row to Enterprise Road South, a vitally needed conversion for other reasons, but one that makes getting out in the west very difficult.
If Jason Moyo Avenue was one way all the way to Rotten Row, it could probably cope, and would certainly cope far better than it does now.
But for the last two blocks, between Harare Street and Rotten Row, Jason Moyo is not one-way. Four west-bound traffic lanes are forced into two. The resulting back-up, made far worse by the insistence of so many motorists breaking the law and driving into intersections as a traffic light glows green, even though they have no hope of exiting the intersection before the red light, blocks many north-south roads.
The long gridlock goes right across the city centre and up Sam Nujoma Street, often as far as Samora Machel Avenue.
The reason for this appalling choke point is the fact that Nelson Mandela Avenue, the main west-to-east artery across the central city centre only starts at Harare Street and east bound traffic from Rotten Row uses the northern two lanes of Jason Moyo Avenue for the first two blocks. There have been plans for decades for the city council to buy out a small number of dilapidated buildings and cut Nelson Mandela all the way through to Rotten Row.
Nothing has happened.
Samora Machel Avenue is artificially limited in its function as a western exit and entrance by the extraordinary decision to keep it as two lanes in each direction from Rotten Row to Park Street, despite the fact that the sections each end have three lanes each way and despite the fact that the road is wide enough, if parking was switched from slanted to parallel, to widen this critical section.
While the city council has no cash to buy out the buildings that must be demolished to extend Nelson Mandela it does have two cheap options that would make a world of difference.
One is to widen that dangerous central section of Samora Machel, helping open up the routes in from the west.
The second is to take advantage of the conversion of Robert Mugabe Road to a full east-bound one-way and channel along Harare Street east bound traffic from Rotten Row allowing Jason Moyo to be one-way all the way.
The widening of a few blocks of Samora Machel would prevent such a move creating a entry choke point in the early mornings.
Another major choke point is the intersection of Nelson Mandela Avenue and Fourth Street. Enforcement of parking regulations along the eastern most part of Nelson Mandela, so ensuring that were in fact as well as theory, two lanes in each direction between Fourth Street and Enterprise Road South, would be a major gain.
The second reform needed is to obliterate a handful of parking bays along Fourth Street, between Nelson Mandela and Samora Machel Avenues to fit in another lane each side and then reassign lanes in Nelson Mandela on the west side of that intersection to give two left-turn and two straight ahead as that avenue turns from a one-way to a two-way.
The council has made driving in the city centre easier and safer by a wholesale conversion of roads into one-way streets.
Unfortunately, it has not done the same for the entrances and exits. We agree that this is not so easy since so many roads do not penetrate all the way across the city centre, but as we have described above there are still some solutions that demand little more than a drum or two of paint.
We hope this indifference to the exit and entrances to the city centre at rush hours does not mean that senior council officials and engineers come to work late and leave early, so missing the disastrous traffic, but if they do drive with the rest of us they must see how impossible traffic flows are becoming at these exits and entrances and must start thinking of solutions.
Online Reporter