murchr wrote:mukiha wrote:I am always amazed at the damage that Daniel arap Moi did to this country....
In 1983, I was booked by a cop at the Uhuru/Haile Selassie roundabout for the offence of "attempting to jump a red traffic light". Yes, 30 years ago!
This was the usual booking of you stopped at the lights with the front wheels of your touching or going past the broad white line adjacent to the traffic light pole. Today I see cops encouraging drivers to jump the lights and wonder when the rain started beating us down!
And yes; in the 1980s, all the traffic lights in the city - uhuru highway, Kenyatta avenue, Moi avenue (then known as Government road) and Lusaka road were controlled centrally from a control room at City Hall.
In those very analogue days - there were only 2 computers in Kenya!!!!! - they had dozens of control cables running from City Hall to the traffic lights. The city also had traffic scouts with walkie-talkies observing critical junctions and updating the controllers at City Hall.
Now that's how advanced we were... until Moi came and messed everything up!
Moi was President in 83' so lets just say, untill the
coup happened, the man changed.
The attempted coup was in 1982!
What you don't seem to understand is that Moi did not kill our nation in single stroke from August 1978 when he took over from Kenyatta-I. The destruction happened gradually over a period of about ten years. By 1988, the nation was on it's knees and it remained there for another 15 years!
I still remember the first major pothole on a Kenyan road.... it appeared on Thika road, near Muigai Inn... Then people were shocked that after one week it was not being fixed! It was left to grow until 1984 when the second re-building of the highway was done by Solel Boneh....
Any way; this is not a political history thread... it's about traffic management.
Are the roundabouts necessary? I think so
Are the traffic lights necessary? I think so too
Are the cops necessary? I think so, but their duty must be changed to catching those who disobey the lights.
However, at the same time, we must figure out a way of rewarding those who are obedient while punishing the disobedient ones.
The famous Corporal Sang showed us how one low ranking cop can sort out the mess on one of the busiest arteries in the city - Jogoo road. He did so by punishing queue jumpers (confiscating keys and keeping you waiting for 3 hours - after the jam has cleared) and in the same stroke rewarding obedience by making sure that the queue moved faster.
Today's cops are doing the exact opposite. They reward (and encourage) disobedience and in the process punish obedience. How many times have you been kept waiting for 45 minute at a roundabout while those on the other side are encouraged, nay, ordered to jump the red lights?
It suddens me to see the City Fathers spend about sh15m installing modern traffic controllers complete with LED bulbs just for the cops to come and order everyone to ignore the lights.... haki inaudhi!!!
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