Roads: Drivers’ nightmares

Roads enable smooth movement of traffic between connected places, an essential service for national development.

The smooth traffic flow helps people, goods and services get to their destinations quicker, boosting business and economic growth.

Transportation engineers use the catchphrase level of service to define the ease of traffic flow through a road or junction. This ranges from A where traffic flows freely to F where there is congestion.

Road managers strive to ensure their roads provide service levels close to A at peak periods.

Unfortunately, the service level of most of roads in Malawi is mostly D to F.

There are numerous restrictions to the free flow of traffic on our roads, meaning that drivers unnecessarily spend too much time on theroad.

Firstly, our road network has failed to grow with time and population growth.

A study released in 2016 showed that the vehicle population had grown by 177 percent since 2008 and would grow by 350 percent by 2025.

Meanwhile, road network growth has been minimal. Only recently has there been attempts to add new roads, but the pace remains slower than the growth in traffic.

More worrying in this regard is the lack of alternative routes between key economic centres and residential locations within urban areas.

There is a lack of capacity for most of our junctions. The capacity of a junction is a measure of how smoothly traffic can flow through it.

Ideally on a junction, traffic turning should not unduly obstruct traffic that is not turning. This is aided by the provision of slip lanes that direct traffic.

Most of our junctions either have no slip lanes or have too short slip lanes, which easily fill up. We thus have too many traffic jams caused by vehicles that need to turn. Through traffic have no choice but to wait.

Thirdly, we have a problem with economic activities that impact traffic movement.

The location of some markets and economic developments were undertaken without assessing the effect on traffic movement.

An example is Bingu Stadium in Lilongwe’s Area 49, which tremendously affect traffic movement.

The same can be said of numerous shopping malls and schools across our urban spaces. These developments attract traffic towards them and their location should have involved a serious analysis of effects on traffic flow.

Then we have informal economic activities like vending and unregulated minibus business, which slow down traffic flow.

Fourthly, we have uncoordinated interventions that worsen traffic jams. These interventions are either temporary or permanent.

Traffic officers directing traffic is a temporary intervention and road expansion is a permanent intervention.

We have had situations where traffic officers control traffic at a junction or roundabout believed to be causing traffic jams actually lead to traffic congestion at the next junction because there is no coordination on how the intervention is undertaken.

Besides, we have had situations where an expansion of one road leads to traffic jam on roads that previously were not having traffic jam.

Fifthly, there is a glaring lack of facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.

Most of our roads have no provision for non-motorised traffic, leading to conflicts in the use of the carriageway. This slows down the flow of vehicles in such areas.

Finally, there is the problem of poor maintenance. Poorly maintained carriageways slow traffic flow as drivers avoid potholes and damaged shoulders.

Added to this is poor maintenance of traffic controlling facilities such as traffic lights.

In the country, we have signalised junctions which end up being clogged because the lights just aren’t working.

All these issues make driving on the roads Malawi a nightmare.

The good thing is that all these factors can be changed and it is within the control of the Roads Authority and town planners.