It has not rained a lot this rainy season. In fact in my home I am currently experiencing water rationing . I was excited when it rained last Friday...for a short time. Getting home from work was terrible! I got stuck in traffic for nearly one hour. The roads were virtually turned into rivers as water flowed on them towards the lowest point. Now lets face it, to drive in Nairobi or Kenya, you cram the route in such a way that you know where every pothole or unevenness in the road is. The next day, my normal route was turned into an unknown as new potholes have appeared. I am having to learn to navigate the road again.
In Kenya we tend to fix working systems. So you get to hear a lot of talk of phasing out the roundabouts and replacing them with cross junctions... controlled by traffic lights and on the other hand T junctions will be phased out as they cause unnecessary snarl ups!!! T junctions out cross junctions in? Talk about sticking our heads in a sand pit!
Sarit Centre has re-directed the traffic to a mostly one way street configuration (a chance for cops to catch those driving on the wrong side) a change from a working system to let us say a somewhat better system for the shopping centre alone. Sarit Centre has managed to direct traffic going into it and thank God lowered the bumps at the road between Lower Kabete road and School Lane. The problem is traffic going into Sarit Centre has been solved, but the problem has now been shifted to the rest of Westlands especially for traffic to and from Westlands roundabout on Ring Road Parklands. This of course affects the traffic on Parklands Road and Lower Kabete road causing unnecessary traffic jams as no one now knows who has the right of way...those on Ring road or those joining it. This are those cross junctions that are meant to replace roundabouts that our city planners keep on talking about.
Something else that I have noticed is the habit of our road engineers of putting pavements everywhere with no drainage way-leaves. Our roads become rivers in the rainy season causing cars to stall thus causing unnecessary traffic jams. Why for example would anyone put pavements on a perfectly smooth roads like the airport road? The road from the airport was re-carpeted and thank you Chinese construction company you left a 500cm drop at the beginning of the carpeting and at the end so that we all know you did a good job by putting a lot of tarmac on the existing road. A few days ago they were busy putting up pavements with no drainage way-leaves on the road to the airport. On your next trip to the airport, keep your eyes peeled for surprising new potholes on what was a perfect functioning road.
For all drivers on Kenyan roads, I wish you a "mis"-directed, traffic free, rainless filled, pothole less road!
No comments:
Post a Comment