est. 2007

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Organized Chaos: Traffic Here, Traffic There, Traffic Everywhere

There is significant road remediation currently being undertaken in Barbados, when completed it is expected traffic congestion will ease on the highways and byways of Barbados. Add activity associated with celebrating Independence Day (Barbados National Day) and Christmas Day rapidly approaching, it explains the organized chaos on the roads every hour of the day. If…

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources Santia Bradshaw

There is significant road remediation currently being undertaken in Barbados, when completed it is expected traffic congestion will ease on the highways and byways of Barbados. Add activity associated with celebrating Independence Day (Barbados National Day) and Christmas Day rapidly approaching, it explains the organized chaos on the roads every hour of the day.

If national productivity is defined as gross domestic product (GDP) per hour worked i.e. the use of labour inputs better than just output per employee (www.oecd.org) one does not have to be Joseph Stiglitz to conclude there is a big national problem to be solved. Former Prime Minister Freundel Stuart once described the inconvenience caused by the poor state of local roads as a ‘transitory inconvenience’. Another one of those quotes that rival former Attorney General Maurice King’s ‘no gangs’ in Barbados. Ordinary people were thought at high school an efficient transportation system is an integral component to a performing economy.

They don’t behave as though they’ve never seen potholes in the roads in their lives, and they do not behave as though their societies are crime free. They understand the real world and in spite of the fact that from time to time you may have these inconveniences, which are really transitory inconveniences, the warmth and hospitality of the people of Barbados is what keeps them coming.

Former Prime Minister Freundel Stuart

On a 21 miles long and 14 miles wide island what is being witnessed on the roads daily should be a source of embarrassment for our planners. Needless to say if locals are being negatively impacted, what about the visitor experience for a country over reliant on tourism?

What is frustrating is motorists left to negotiate the chaos without supervision. Where are the traffic cops and wardens missing from the bottleneck areas to assist with relieving the congestion and deterring some of the lawlessness? The mounting chaos on our roads is a reflection of inept management practiced by successive governments. This is no overnight ‘achievement’.

#organizedchaos

19 responses to “Organized Chaos: Traffic Here, Traffic There, Traffic Everywhere”

  1. Driver Avatar
    Driver

    Gridlock is when nothing is moving and standing still
    Roads were not designed for so many cars.
    Public Transport could have separate Bus Lanes to let them move freely.
    If problems are due to Rush Hour for work ..
    Businesses should be more flexible allowing people to come in for different staggered time slots, and could also provide Bus services for employees.
    Government solution is to implement congestion charges for urban car users and tolls for road use which becomes lucrative source of income.

  2. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Organized chaos is what you get when you elect jokers, who cannot even manage the profession in which they are trained, …to manage your national affairs and treasury.

    Organized chaos is what you get when you sell off all your assets to foreigners for a pot of soup (a fancy meal and a BMW), and then depend on THEM to make wise decisions that benefit YOU.

    Organized chaos is what you get when you DEFY the laws set down by the CREATOR (who invented EVERY shiite), and choose instead to follow a bunch of materialistic albino-centric demons (who tormented your own ancestors for CENTURIES to get rich)

    Organized chaos is inevitable when the most retarded members of society are designated as the ‘clergy’ and the ‘church’ – allegedly representing the CREATOR of everything that exists – but constantly begging for shiite money.

    Organized chaos is par for the course for genuine brass bowls.

    Organized chaos is a shiite society of ‘Eve and Adam’s, unmanageable demonic children and buller-men, ….and where NOTHING works ….
    but yet the brass bowls are too stupid to try something different….

    TRULY organized chaos, is where the only direction is obviously DOWN…..
    but yet the brass bowls keep grasping for floating straws…..instead of looking for sackcloth and ashes and turning to the ONLY hope of salvation from chaotic destruction.

    The shiite traffic is the least of our problems Boss….

  3. Progress (Edit) Avatar
    Progress (Edit)

    End times and all that
    Don’t worry or fret

    Babylon have the needle in the red
    but we’ve never been marked for death

    My people won’t mark for death
    Mark For Death

  4. GreenMonkey Avatar
    GreenMonkey

    It seems improving highway/road capacity to improve traffc flow is like a dog chasing its tail.

    The Science Is Clear: More Highways Equals More Traffic. Why Are DOTs Still Ignoring It?

    Numerous studies have documented the phenomenon known as induced demand in transportation: Basically, if you build highway lanes, more drivers will come. And yet, transportation agencies rarely account for this effect when planning road projects.

    In a recent paper published by the Transportation Research Record, author Ronald Milam and his research team reviewed the various studies documenting the induced demand effect. They found that for every 1 percent increase in highway capacity, traffic increases 0.29 to 1.1 percent in the long term (about five years out), and up to 0.68 percent in the short term (one or two years). One recent study found a one-to-one relationship between new highway lane capacity and traffic increases.

    However, highway planners are failing to incorporate this effect into their models. Milam told Streetsblog that “it is rare to find an induced travel analysis in most transportation infrastructure design or environmental impact analysis.” That means transportation agencies are green-lighting money for highway expansions that are destined to become congested again only a short time later.

    https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/21/the-science-is-clear-more-highways-equals-more-traffic-why-are-dots-still-ignoring-it/

  5. David Avatar
    David

    There is a common sense position the point made earlier- everything has a carrying capacity, allowing unbridled ownership of vehicles to travel any and every where in the name of freedom of choice is nonsense and will lead us to nowhere.

  6. David Avatar
    David

    @Bush Tea

    Agree our traffic woes is merely a symptom, maybe we should discuss pension woes next LOL.

  7. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ David,

    thanks for the ” eye candy ” .

    https://www.toronto.ca/news/city-of-toronto-launches-12-hour-saturday-pothole-repair-blitz/

  8. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    The problem here has to do with limited land and our inability to have a lot of roads with four or five lanes. That can never happen. We simply don’t have the space.
    We need a train and ferry service. That’s the only way we are going to get people on public transportation and reduce the use of so many cars on the road.
    The roundabouts are a disaster mainly because we don’t use them properly and it seems that our new culture is to break even the most simple and straight forward rules.
    We are too busy with shit talk and defending empty BS rhetoric ; even Carl Moore complaining about the gobbledegook.
    How can we talk about developing a country and having a truly diversified economy when we can’t get a proper public transportation going and we still can’t collect garbage even when we buy both buses and garbage trucks.
    Like it or lump it,we need to correct a lot of basics before we get anywhere.
    We all must hope that this tourist season lives up to expectations . If it fails we will be in the shark guts.
    Happy Independence and Republic Day to all.
    Let’s remember our great ancestors who gave us this beautiful island state.
    🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧🇧
    Peace.

  9. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    I remind the BU community that the blessed OSA, second mentor to our Supreme Leader after St Barrow, wanted to build flyovers to facilitate traffic.

    Then the DLP came and it all failed. So the DLP is to blame for the current traffic chaos.

    Tron, Narrator of the New Republic

  10. déjà vu Avatar
    déjà vu

    BU is like déjà vu / bad joke
    for 365 x 10 = 3650 days
    Have you ever had the sense that you’ve done something or gone through a new situation before? Does it seem like you know what’s going to happen next? That feeling is often described as déjà vu. The saying comes from French, meaning “already seen.”

  11. TheOGazerts Avatar
    TheOGazerts

    https://barbadostoday.bb/2022/11/29/ssa-pleads-for-workers-to-be-treated-with-respect/
    (1) where a resident allegedly acted in a threatening manner when told by SSA workers about they way in which they had handled the dumping of cooking oil, which had splashed them during their duties.

    (2) Padmore, who also spoke last month about an alleged assault on a worker by a store owner in Bridgetown, said that the rise in incidents of confrontation was deeply worrying.

    This has to stop. This disrespect and bullying must be stomped out.

    If the police and SSA management can do nothing and these incidents continue to happen then the workers must target these bad-asses and allow garbage to accumulate on their premises. Force them to seek to have their garbage removed by a private hauler.

    It is obvious that these bad-asses (business owners) have big-ups on speed-dial. SSA management needs to grow a pair and let big-ups know they are not helping. Cut out the talk and act decisively.

  12. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    ” The lead doctor involved in the care of Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s younger brother while he was at a private medical facility in 2021 said there was a possibility that complications from the COVID-19 vaccine led to his death.

    Dr Sahle Griffith, the principal of Surgical Solutions Inc., said he was “absolutely convinced” that Warren Mottley died as a result of small bowel ischemia, and World Health Organisation (WHO) studies had reported that condition could be caused by some COVID-19 vaccines.”

    https://barbadostoday.bb/2022/11/29/jab-at-fault/

  13. Artax Avatar
    Artax

    “It is obvious that these bad-asses (business owners) have big-ups on speed-dial.”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    As the ‘old saying’ goes, “when yuh suh ‘A’ yuh got to say ‘B.’

    Some SSA employees seem to hold disdain for people who live in ordinary communities, but, would ‘humble’ themselves in the ‘heights and terraces.’

    People can tell some very disturbing stories about the unpleasant treatment they received from some very unmannerly, uncouth garbage collectors.

    One morning, a few years ago, I parked in front my home. Heard the continuous honking of a vehicle’s horn and went outside to find out what was going on. It was a SSA driver who was signaling for me to remove my vehicle.
    Although I told him to ‘hold on a second’ because I had to get the car keys, which seemed to anger him, he continued to honk the horn until I returned outside and moved the vehicle.

    After that ‘incident,’ they did not collect our garbage for approximately two (2) months.
    The reason they gave the Supervisor for not collecting our garbage was the garbage can was ‘TIED DOWN,’ thereby preventing them from lifting it……, which was a ‘BLATANT UNTRUTH.’

    Perhaps it’s about time poor people have “big-ups on speed dial as well.”

  14. David Avatar
    David

    @Artax

    The people in the ‘terraces’ fill the Xmas stockings with a lot of goodies, also there are hand me down appliances etc to be distributed.

  15. David Avatar
    David

    Talk, talk, talk.

    BBA backs call for revamp of judiciary
    The Barbados Bar Association (BBA) has welcomed Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham’s call for a new direction for the judiciary, adding that a thorough overhaul is long overdue.
    Speaking at the ceremony for the opening of Henry Forde And David Simmons Legal And Judicial Complex on Coleridge Street on November 18, Sir Patterson said antiquated legislation continued to prove a hindrance to the efficient dispensation of justice and was out of sync with the needs of constituents.
    “We must not and cannot reopen for business with the mindset and methods of the dying past . . . . There are two areas which I can think of immediately. The Act governing the legal profession, which sets out to regulate the conduct of lawyers, was enacted 50 years ago when the word computer was not part of the lexicon. That Act cries out for immediate modernisation to march with the times. Another illustration of inefficiency would be
    the old and inefficient methods of running the traffic courts with offenders spending precious time to receive a fine. This is simply obsolete and wasteful,” he said.
    In a release yesterday, new president of the BBA Kaye Williams said that for years, her group had lobbied for the modernisation of the system to help reduce the backlogs.
    “The appointment of additional judges is a positive step to increasing efficiency. However, emphasis also has to be placed on support systems and the advantages technology has to offer. A thorough overhaul is long overdue, as the public ultimately is disadvantaged by delays,” she said.
    Williams also pointed out that two days after the Chief Justice’s address last Tuesday to open the legal year, the BBA urgently issued notice to its members of a special general meeting for this week.
    “We have given this matter priority and will meet
    as a body to specifically discuss the reforms which were proposed and thereafter issue a report to the office of Chief Justice. We all have our respective roles to play in achieving the modernisation of our judicial system, and we are ready to work with the Chief Justice and execute this vision,” she added. ( PR)


    Source: Nation

  16. David Avatar
    David

    If you are part of the problem, you should be part of the solution.

    Artistes join gun cry
    FOLLOWING CALLS for an end to violence, the last few days have seen additional pleas from the Juvenile Liaison Scheme, the Barbados Union of Teachers, a High Court judge who repeated his appeal for a remedial school for troubled children, and veteran businessman Muhammad Nassar on the Starcom Network Monday urging youths to use their energies to make temporary sacrifices while learning a trade instead of going after ever-elusive “fast money”.
    Amid these, some strident calls over the weekend came from reggae and dancehall artistes. One of them, Sizzla Kalongi, a Bobo Shanti Rastafari known for his powerful lyrics, spoke out against the gun violence on the island while noting that Barbados was synonymous with education.
    Sizzla’s comment was welcome and his compliment adds to those from some of our regional neighbours, who have long lauded Barbadians for their high educational standards, organisational skills, sporting and artistic abilities, leadership at the political and other levels, good work ethic, along with an uncanny knack for thinking twice before rushing headlong
    into impressivelooking arenas. This last attribute, in particular, has served the nation well as many may recall Barbados’ decision not to get on board with the glittery Caribbean Star airline and accompanying ventures, later discovered to be part of a less-than-honest scheme.
    Bajans need not pat themselves on the back, but commendations matter from objective parties, including Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s recent reminder of this nation’s solidarity spanning 50 years against the United States, which sought to make Cuba a pariah in the Western world.
    In the Sizzla instance, here is an outstanding artiste – from a country whose cultural icons we have long admired but whose crime rate we have often lamented – telling Barbadian youth not to go down that violent road. Who as a right-thinking person should not agree with him since, unlike Jamaica and other large territories where crime may be concentrated in specific “hot spots”, there is nowhere to hide within 166 square miles of flat terrain?
    A forum like Hennessy Artistry, therefore, is important not just for good rhythms, but conscious lyrics and views coming from people to whom young Barbadians
    are likely to be listening.
    Certainly, more than half of those at Kensington Oval would have been youths, who may not necessarily have been reading newspapers or following events on digital or electronic media; but a large segment of them would have heard musical artistes on Saturday night urging an end to violence and recalling their individual triumphs over poverty and harsh upbringings.
    For this, the promoters, FAS☆7, who most likely would have informed the artistes of the local situation, must be commended. Promoting conscious music and entertainers to whom the youth will flock helps local authorities to meet the young generation where their ears are tuned and, to some extent, where their reality of economic struggle is.
    The youths must be reminded that they are the future of this country and that they may be destroying their own chance of survival, but to be told this in a forum they like and understand can be effective.

    Source: Nation

  17. David Avatar
    David

    Crisis management!

    PSV pressure

    Bradshaw: Stringent rules to rein in sector to be approved soon
    by GERCINE CARTER gercinecarter@nationnews.com
    MAJOR REGULATION is in the works to control the behaviour of public service vehicle (PSV) operators.
    Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Santia Bradshaw told the House of Assembly yesterday that stringent rules designed to rein in the troublesome sector are included in the mandate of the Transport Authority. They will address issues such as behaviour, PSV permits and licences, and will also impose greater responsibilities on the owners for the conduct of drivers and conductors.
    She added the regulations, intended to “give greater teeth” to the Transport Authority in relation to enforcement, will shortly be approved by Cabinet.
    “We will be looking at regulating public service vehicles in a major way . . . . We are intending to answer the cries of the public and the users of public service vehicles, for those drivers and certainly sometimes the conductors, whose behaviour is not befitting of the position that they hold, carrying so many lives on a daily basis,” Bradshaw said.
    However, while chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport, Roy Raphael, supported the move to strengthen the regulatory powers of the Transport Authority, he told the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday he wanted “a private body, totally away from the Transport Authority, to govern and manage the disciplinary aspect” of PSV operators.
    He suggested that body be headed by someone who “would have the same power as the magistrate or court”. He also contended that the umbrella organisation representing the PSVs should have had a greater say in the discussions about the coming regulations.
    However, in her presentation to the House, Bradshaw stressed that Government could not continue to ignore the cries from the public.
    While leading off debate on the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, 2022, she said the PSV culture was one that had been plaguing Barbados “for decades” and it was now necessary to move “to the direction where not only the regulations are introduced but we also have to take certain steps to ensure that there is enforcement”.
    Transport inspectors
    The proposed regulations will see the introduction of transport inspectors who Bradshaw said would assist with the monitoring on the roads “to prevent the police from having
    to spend so much time dealing with road traffic matters”.
    She added: “Without the necessary enforcement, without the necessary steps being taken to ensure that people are on the roads to identify the problems that are taking place on our roads and to report that to the Transport Authority so that action can be taken, then the regulations will mean nothing.”
    The regulations are now being reviewed by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel.
    “We anticipate in the coming weeks after those regulations have been issued, (there will be) a public education campaign that enables the general public, the conductors, the owners and the drivers, to better understand their responsibilities. It also places an onus on the general public to ensure that it does not encourage behaviours that can be a danger to others,” Bradshaw said.
    Yesterday’s amendment, which was passed by the House, makes an adjustment to the 2017 Road Traffic Act that prevented people between the ages 18 and 25 years from obtaining a heavy-duty licence and limiting the age to 25 and up.

    Source: Nation

  18. I Believe Avatar
    I Believe

    Sizzla Kalonji is a Bobo Shanti Rasta who lick up the chalice as a spiritual rite of worship.
    Spirituality of marijuana is applicable on the drugs thread too.

  19. TheOGazerts Avatar
    TheOGazerts

    I said ‘ordered chaos’ but the blogger here stated ‘organized chaos’.

    Several are getting the feeling that things are not as they appear. It’s like a movie set where you see nice buildings, but there is nothing behind the doors. A facade, nothing more.

    The chaos is obvious and apparent with drivers on the road, but nothing is working as it should.

    Everything has to be done twice. You will soon see a perfectly executed simulation at a next school and then they will screw-up something else.

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