The Sunday Mail
THE major problem facing Harare is traffic congestion, and the residents are suffering.
The jams start at 6am up to about 9am. In the afternoon, they begin around 2.30 until about 7. On wet days, they get to even 9pm or 10pm.
The situation gets worse when one gets into the city centre or when approaching major intersections.
Major intersections in the city include the immediate ring out of the central business district (CBD), like Sam Nujoma Street and Josiah Tongogara Avenue. Then the second outer ring, the Sam Nujoma Street and Churchill Street; the third outer ring, like Sam Nujoma Street Extension and Lomagundi Road; and the fourth outer ring, like Mazowe/Bindura Road and Harare Drive.
There are six major roads that radiate from the Harare CBD — Samora Machel Avenue, Bulawayo Road, Bindura/Mt Darwin Road, Kirkman Drive, Simon Mazorodze Road and Seke Road.
In the past, it had to do with direction; however, these days, it is neither here nor there.
Both entering and exiting the city centre are now a big challenge. This shows that the problem has become quite defined.
Everyone feels the heat, and everyone complains about the problem. However, everyone is pushing to go wherever they want.
In transport planning theory, the use of private vehicles brings convenience to the user; they can pick up and drop passengers wherever they want. They are at no one’s mercy. It appears that freedom and convenience are the major plague to the city’s ability to allow easy mobility.
Harare is chocked and coughing heavily! It is groaning. So are its inhabitants. So, also, are the passersby.
The problem
The problem of Harare is not about whether it has narrow roads and streets, as I have heard some people purport.
They have said, unlike Bulawayo that has wide streets and roads everywhere, Harare’s narrow streets are its problem.
I have seen narrower streets in Accra, Ghana, but traffic flow is relatively better.
For Harare, the problem is largely behavioural.
Of course, most other cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America experience traffic congestion. Because I have not lived there much, I will focus on the Harare traffic jam problem.
My experiences elsewhere, like in Cape Town, shows that there are efforts that have been made from the supply side of the story to help alleviate traffic congestion.
In Cape Town, there is a defined bus lane in thoroughfares.
Someone is already informed by the nature of the roads to either use his/her private car and go slower or use public transport — the bus — and go faster.
A private car attempting to use the bus lane is immediately fined; everything is captured on camera.
The rules are very well-defined.
All major roads, be they far into the countryside, are on camera and any nuances and distractions are immediately attended to when they happen.
Rules of the game, culture and organisation define what we call institutions.
The behavioural issue at the centre of the Harare traffic congestion is partly an institutional problem, much as it is also a private vehicle user problem.
It is an institutional problem because the local authority’s road rules are not clearly defined and sometimes whatever efforts made in infrastructure provisioning suffer from vandalism.
The other time I was travelling along Simon Muzenda Street (formerly Fourth Street).
There was a serious jam but under police assistance to alleviate it at the intersection with Samora Machel Avenue.
There was need for police intervention since the traffic lights, which were supposed to be powered by solar batteries, were not working.
On checking whether the solar panels were there, I saw none.
The next set of questions became: Who took them? How? What time could that have been?
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Someone saw a profit in stealing the solar panels. To me, this shows that Harare has not yet become an intelligent city.
An intelligent city is one that is aided by technology, including cameras, in its functionality.
For most African cities, getting themselves to this status is still a challenge.
Enclaves of informality and deep poverty are “holing” the African cityscapes.
It is a vicious cycle; the cities are not intelligent because the generality of the populations lives below the poverty datum line.
When the citizens are that poor, they fail to pay for services. Non-payment for services means councils live on shoestring budgets.
Shoestring budgets do not allow for spending on critical infrastructure. The non-existence of critical infrastructure explains the vulnerability the population is exposed to.
At one point, having been to the Netherlands, where urban cycling is widely practised, I came back with an idea to buy a bicycle so I could ride from Greendale, where I used to reside, to the University of Zimbabwe in Mt Pleasant, where I was a lecturer.
My family stopped me from following through on that idea; they still needed a breadwinner!
The roads are poorly marked; cycle tracks start, appear, disappear and sometimes are not even provided.
While cycling works elsewhere, for Harare, the cyclists are at the greatest risk.
The risk of the cyclist, which has also become synonymous with that of a well-behaved driver, has been exacerbated by the presence of unruly commuter omnibus drivers.
These do not follow any normal road rules.
They can face you head-on and you have to whisk yourself away to save your life.
They behave like the proverbial unicorn.
Tradition says the unicorn did not count what was on its way — tree or mountain.
Unfortunately, even now, private car drivers tend to follow the behaviour of the kombi drivers. This has put the city road to much worse risk right now.
It is now a very common sight along the roads that in every trip one makes, one sees two or so minor accidents involving vehicles locking bumpers or one scratching the other’s side.
Most district, local distributor and access roads are potholed. There is a street joke which has been circulating that goes: “If you see a driver in Harare keeping well left, something must be very wrong in their head. Otherwise, one has to move like a slow-moving snake, wriggling left, right and centre as it moves ahead.”
As part of the behavioural problem is the increasing car ownership by households.
Unfortunately, as society, owning a car is symptomatic of being well up. Everyone is striving, at least, to have a small car that takes them from point A to point B.
Harare’s congestion problem emanates from a plethora of problems — everyone rushing to get somewhere within a short time, the city not being intelligent enough, the CBD being the main attractor of vehicle population, policy and practice not ready to allow for potential cycling and the general obsession of the idea that “owning and operating my own car” is a status symbol.
Potholes, too!
Dealing with the cited challenges needs a systems thinking approach in which, collectively, these issues must be tackled.
Of respite is the ongoing master-planning process, provided for by a Presidential decree by June 2024. The process brings together forces from both the supply and demand sides of the traffic congestion equation.
Let us hope the math will work.
Professor Innocent Chirisa specialises in Urban and Regional Planning. , He is currently the acting Vice Chancellor of the Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University in Bindura.
