Traffic Light Blues

DRIVING to school every morning for 12 years and now to work I’ve experienced the steadily increasing traffic in our city: every year there are a few more cars on the road.

Our roads are some of the best in Africa, not only well maintained but also well planned. The reason for this could be that we’ve never had to cope with a massive population boom or the sudden urban migration that many other African countries have had, I’d like to think that it has been due to exceptional planning on the part of the Windhoek traffic department.However I do feel that we should be careful even now not to ruin what has been accomplished so far.I Therefore I feel that I need to be critical of the new traffic lights at the intersection of Mission Road and Sam Nujoma Drive.There have been traffic lights at the intersection next to this one (Jan Jonker, Sam Nujoma) for many years now but to put a separate set of traffic lights 20 metres away from this one seemed a bit strange to me.Maybe there have been many accidents near here or traffic is particularly heavy at times but before the second set of traffic lights were used there was a short time when the intersection was set up as a four-way stop, this to me seemed to work very well, possibly at 13h15 when St Paul’s students left school and there was the mid-day rush hour the traffic was heavy, but what can be expected next to a school around one o’clock.The problem seems to me that there is really an intersection which is roughly 40 metres in diameter – to try to get through here in one shot is at times difficult, because the light turns halfway through and you’re stuck on the island, waiting double the time you should at a traffic light.I think that therefore it may be a good idea to tweak the traffic lights, to remove them would just be waste of the money that has been put into their installation and purchase.I don’t mean any offence to the traffic department of Windhoek and would like to thank them for the great service that they have provided to us up to this point and continue to do so.Martin Mendelsohn, Via e-mailThe reason for this could be that we’ve never had to cope with a massive population boom or the sudden urban migration that many other African countries have had, I’d like to think that it has been due to exceptional planning on the part of the Windhoek traffic department.However I do feel that we should be careful even now not to ruin what has been accomplished so far.I Therefore I feel that I need to be critical of the new traffic lights at the intersection of Mission Road and Sam Nujoma Drive.There have been traffic lights at the intersection next to this one (Jan Jonker, Sam Nujoma) for many years now but to put a separate set of traffic lights 20 metres away from this one seemed a bit strange to me.Maybe there have been many accidents near here or traffic is particularly heavy at times but before the second set of traffic lights were used there was a short time when the intersection was set up as a four-way stop, this to me seemed to work very well, possibly at 13h15 when St Paul’s students left school and there was the mid-day rush hour the traffic was heavy, but what can be expected next to a school around one o’clock.The problem seems to me that there is really an intersection which is roughly 40 metres in diameter – to try to get through here in one shot is at times difficult, because the light turns halfway through and you’re stuck on the island, waiting double the time you should at a traffic light.I think that therefore it may be a good idea to tweak the traffic lights, to remove them would just be waste of the money that has been put into their installation and purchase.I don’t mean any offence to the traffic department of Windhoek and would like to thank them for the great service that they have provided to us up to this point and continue to do so.Martin Mendelsohn, Via e-mail