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Travelling along Dar roads cumbersome due to congestion
2006-12-27 09:03:27
By Simbiso Machine
Traffic congestion is one of the problems making headlines in local papers these days.
Whenever one wants to move from one place to another in dares Salaam, they first of all worry about how long it will take them because of congestion.
The congestion in Dar es Salaam’s roads has caused so much delay that almost everyone cannot wait for the rescue by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency JICA.
From school children to directors of companies, everyone is looking forward to an end to this problem.
Traffic congestion should be regarded as a serious problem and it can have serious negative impacts on the economy.
Traffic jam can cause ineffiency through time that is lost whilst waiting in the long queues.
If the total number of minutes or hours that each individual spends in a traffic jam is to be summed up, the total number of hours lost might be unbelievable.
”When there is traffic congestion in Dar es Salaam, the whole national economy suffers and that is why we are working hard to end the problem,” said the Minister of Infrastructure Development, Basil Mramba
The situation in Dar es Salaam has become too bad to the extent that ice cream man can afford to sell their ice creams to the people waiting in the jams.
This scenario illustrates how bad the situation in Dar es Salaam is.
An article in The Guardian of November 21 said that Dar es Salaam is becoming more expensive because of traffic congestion.
It seems therefore that congestion can also result in costly business activities.
When congestion causes delays and inconveniences, extra operation costs are incurred by organizations, as pointed out by the Director for City based KMC Transport Company, Juma Salum
The increase in fuel consumption as cars wait idling in the jams may be another reason why business activities would become costly.
Organizations will tend to pass the cost onto the next person, who is the person they are in business with.
Also, with this problem of traffic jam, there will be inefficiency as some people come late for work and hide behind traffic jam.
People may go round town doing their own errands and when they arrive at their work places late, they lie that they have been delayed in traffic jams.
”The loss that has been caused by traffic congestion cannot be calculated immediately,” said the Deputy Permanent Secretary for Ministry of State, Prime Minister’ Office and Local Government, Wilson Mkama.
People can never plan with this problem of traffic jam.
According to the same article in The Guardian of November 21, 2006, congestion is no longer confined to the normal peak hours of seven to nine am and five to seven pm, but on some roads, congestion continues for most of the hours.
Congestion is therefore a serious problem and the Government should be commended for the efforts that it is putting to try and end the problem of congestion.
The problem might worsen if not stopped, as more people will continue to buy cars.
The Government is said to have signed a contract with the Japanese International Agency (JICA) in order to conduct a study that will help the management of traffic jams in Dar es Salaam.
It is however important that, whilst plans with the Japanese International Agency are underway, the Government looks into other alternatives that may help lessen the problem.
Some solutions were suggested by Association of Consulting Engineers Tanzania to reduce the problem of congestion.
The solutions included, widening of existing roads and building new ones, removal of bottlenecks at road intersections for both signalized and unsignalized ones.
If congestion is removed from the city’s roads, operations will be improved in the town and productivity will in turn go up.
It seems the problem is also now being worsened by the unavailability of electricity in the town. Policemen have to regulate the movement of traffic at most robot-controlled intersections.
This tends to make the movement of traffic very slow, as a human being cannot operate like what the traffic lights do.
Congestion should therefore be dealt with as it has negative impacts on the country’s economy.
Maybe, only the ice cream man may rejoice over traffic jam for he has found an easy and readily available market for his product.
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