Driving down in the opposite direction now, down Broad Street, brings back boyhood memories to people of my generation of days when traffic went in both directions up and down the full length of that main street.
Back then the inevitable confusion at the four-cross junction by DaCostas Mall was handled by a policeman dressed in white tunic, white cork hat, and white gloves, standing in the middle of the street on a white box and keeping as smooth a flow in all directions with the deftness and grace of a ballet dancer.
Forward to the present, and have you tried to drive through Bridgetown since they shut down the Wharf Road because of storm damage and changed traffic movements on upper Broad Street from west-east to east-west?
I know that most people don’t like it because of the headaches they experience if they happen to be unlucky enough to find themselves stuck and sweating in a line of traffic going nowhere very fast on certain streets into and out of that part of Barbados.
Wisdom is now dictatingto the driver that unless you can’t do any better because you work in town or can’t avoid being there for one reason or another, that you steer clear of the heart of The City.
For me, I like half of the change but don’t like the other half.
The half I don’t like is the part they have left untouched, namely lower Broad Street where having to turn left or right when you reach in front of DaCostas mall is creating pure mayhem.
Previously, only one lane of traffic turned left at that junction and went towards Central Station. Today’s traffic in that lane has to fight with what used to be the left lane going straight up Broad Street, collide with the absent-minded in the third lane that is no longer the right lane up Broad Street, and crash into the new right lane coming down Broad Street.
Talk about confusion, frustration and road rage! Friday afternoon I was going to Hastings and made the mistake of driving up Fontabelle to Broad Street. It was fairly easy going until I reached outside St Mary’s Church after which to describe movement as being at snail’s pace would be an understatement.
I ended up taking more than half-hour to get from the church to the traffic lights at Roebuck and Crumpton streets.
But that was where the part I like about the traffic changes went into gear. For with every driver avoiding the city centre like the plague, you could march North Korea’s million-man army down
St Michael’s Row by the Cathedral, across the Chamberlain Bridge, down Lower Bay Street, past Independence Square, down Hincks Street and a few other roads without having to ask no more than one or two motorists to pull over.
The best part is that while driving up Lower Broad Street is mess, driving down, especially in the left lane is as smooth as running hot butter over the bottom of a frying pan. In fact, it took me less time to get from the corner of Roebuck and Crumpton streets to by destination on upper Bay Street and back to Spring Garden via Lower Bay Street, upper Broad Street, Hincks Street and eventually Princess Alice Highway, than it took to get from St Mary’s to Crumpton Street.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.
