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Almost any day of the week these days Bermuda's roads have become more difficult to travel on. Some spots are worse than others but overall traffic is noticeably more congested.

Take your pick. Blackwatch Pass has just about reached its limit for cordiality to get people through the junction.

You can bet the highway engineers are trying to figure out where to put traffic lights and the police are contemplating a traffic officer onsite for the rush hours.

The Collectors Hill traffic "solution" foretells what will happen at Black Watch.

Collectors Hill had been a difficult junction for a couple of decades. Successive Transport Ministers had promised solutions - from roundabouts and one way streets to traffic lights.

The problem just kept getting worse and threatened to become a win/lose issue for the area's political hopefuls.

Solution?

The traffic light "solution" brought some order to the junction in that it slows everybody down. But I'm convinced that anyone who can avoid that junction does so.

Blackwatch Pass, Tee Street, the Flatts junction, Rosemont Avenue - I'm sure there are others - are similar problem junctions that will no doubt soon have similar "upgraded" traffic controls.

The problems won't be solved, just impeded, like the traffic.

The real problem with traffic congestion is that it tends to happen gradually and we humans with our innate adaptability just adapt to it. We don't like it. We get frustrated with it, grumble about it, even get outraged with other road users.

But in the end, we adapt. If the changes in road use occurred overnight, or even over a few weeks or months, our sense of outrage would be far greater. As it is, we tend to accept it, grudgingly, and find new routes or just leave home earlier to compensate. The changes are occurring more frequently these days.

Because our roads are finite and many are close to or past capacity, each new batch of cars makes a greater and more noticeable difference.

The last time I saw new statistics on the subject, we were adding cars to our roads at the net rate of ninety per month. A visit on any day to the TCD compound after work hours reveals up to a dozen driving instructors coaching the next batch of road users. Another problem layer is that current driving conditions are the norm for new drivers. Their history of driving conditions begins with the existing level of congestion - they have no experience of less crowded roads, a more leisurely pace, fewer accidents, less stress.

They are like a clean slate for future traffic-related issues to begin writing on - it will be some time before their slate is as filled to overflowing as ours is now.

Some solutions that have been posed are to widen and straighten the roads (though I haven't heard this one said with any conviction lately), increase the use of ferries, deny use of cars to certain segments of the population, restrict car use to certain days of the week.

These all treat the symptoms, but the facts are that even though we can travel faster on our roads, it's taking us more time to get anywhere. But just like clogged arteries and high blood pressure in humans, traffic flow is a symptom of a deeper problem.

Bermuda is bursting at the seams and speeding up the expansion of the economy is like telling an already overweight person to eat more, and eat faster. That's a recipe for disaster, as any good doctor will tell you.[[In-content Ad]]

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