Time was when the fastest way to get from anywhere in Barbados to anywhere else was to find your way onto the ABC Highway and whoosh you were from Simpson Motors to CBC, from PriceSmart to up by Mac Fingall, from Roberts Manufacturing to Barbados Golf Club, from Rendezvous Gardens to the airport, from Black Rock to Top Rock and whatever else imaginable in less than no time, as the saying goes.
Back then, drivers like me abandoned tried and trusted short cuts through pot-holed roads in unknown villages and wherever else possible in order to escape being trapped in traffic congestion while getting from point A to Point B.
These days the reverse is more the norm than the exception as drivers again seek out the old as well as new short cuts in order to avoid being trapped in the mile-long congestion that is now found heading to most of the roundabouts, especially from the bottom of University Hill to the top of Top Rock.
One afternoon recently, I left a meeting in St Lucy with more than an hour to spare to get to another appointment in the Pine, St Michael area. To avoid getting caught in the sluggish traffic that is quite often normal along the low road of Highway 1, especially between Speightstown and Holetown at that time of day, I opted for the longer but usually quicker route of the top road along the 2A, better known as the Ronald Mapp Highway.
With no slow-moving sugar cane laden tractor trailers to contend with, since we are not in the crop season, and driving at a speed in keeping with what would be considered proper, I reached the “traffic solution” that has been erected north of the Sol station at Redman’s Village and was soon on the when-will-it-finish four-laner leading to the new and then beyond towards what I have seen listed on an on-line map as Warrens City.
The DJ on my radio alerted me to the fact that I had made from Arawak to the other “traffic solution” approaching the Simpson Motors compound with half an hour and a few minutes to spare to reach my destination, which was less than half the distance from where I was, compared to where I had come from.
Would you believe that half-an-hour and much more than a few minutes later I was stuck in a mud-like stream of traffic approaching Bussa as people on foot walked past, more than likely heading to do business in the sky.
Although I was so near in terms of distance, yet so far away in terms of time, I was left with not alternative but to call the client and apologise for my lateness, giving the reason for the fact that the chair in which I should have been sitting was still empty.
And as I sat at the wheel, moving a few inches today and a few more tomorrow, I wondered what the situation would have been like had the planned overpasses, flyovers, whatever, been erected.
Would they, as had been promised, really have allowed a 12-minute, unimpeded and uninterrupted drive in both directions, from the approach to what used to be a roundabout outside Simpson Motors to just beyond that which carries the name of the greatest cricketer on earth or Mars.
Or would drivers, in their quest to use those fast lanes as short cuts, have created just as much congestion as currently exists without them?
I guess we will never know.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com.