Solutions to Cayman’s traffic problems
Alric Lindsay writes: The one thing we know for sure about the traffic problem in Cayman is that building more lanes is not the solution. This is because multiple lanes simply lead back to a bottleneck. We need to start looking at common-sense ways to reduce traffic. This will also require some discipline and sacrifice on our part. Below are ideas that we may consider.
Improved bus transportation system
We must transform the bus transportation system into a 24 hour, efficient, affordable and reliable network with outstanding customer service. If feasible, we may explore the use of trams powered by electricity or solar. School buses currently in place for public schools should also be used for private schools. This will result in less individual cars on the road in the school zones at peak times. It also encourages students from public and private schools to mix, rather than to segregate.
Carpooling
If students can share a bus, surely the rest of us can consider carpooling. While carpooling may not be a part of our “culture” or something we are accustomed to in Cayman, we must make sacrifices from time to time and leave our cars at home and drive to work with a friend or colleague. This may result in less cars on the road.
Working remotely
During the lockdown, some of the largest employers in Cayman were forced to utilise the internet and other technology to stay in touch with their clients. This involved hundreds of staff members working from home. Some firms have now adopted this remote working option for their employees on a permanent basis. Other large firms and the government should now consider allowing more staff members to work from home, especially where face to face contact with clients is not required for the delivery of services.
Of course, for this to work properly, excellent technology, including software must be in place. This may require an expansion or improvement of existing infrastructure to ensure that there is no disruption in the provision of services here or abroad. Ultimately, working remotely means you don’t have to be on the road, experiencing road rage and getting stuck in traffic.
Staggering work hours
Employers may also consider staggering work hours so that employees have different start times, say, 10am start rather than an 8am start. Working outside peak times may result in less cars being on the road at the same time.
Cycling or walking to work
If you live close to work and you are able to walk or cycle to work, then you should consider doing that periodically. And of course, we need appropriate cycling lanes (not just shared lanes or sharrows) to keep people safe. Increased driver education is also necessary to respect those who are walking or cycling. In my view, where drivers speed while others are cycling or walking, the speeding fines should be increased to three times the normal fine.
Ferries and water taxis
If we want to avoid cars altogether, we can think about the water taxi or ferry systems used in other countries. These could be implemented for use between West Bay and George Town or between other districts. Of course, this must be supported by an excellent bus transportation system as users may need a lift from the water taxi terminal to work.
Restricting car imports or cars per household
If a combination of other methods does not work, a difficult step may need to be taken to limit the total number of vehicles imported and/or restricting the number of vehicles owned by each household. Purchases of new vehicles may also be restricted to long-term residents and citizens.
Other traffic related concerns and steps taken
Traffic is not just a problem on the main roads. Neighbourhoods like Windsor Park and Webster’s Estates have been used as shortcuts for many years during peak times. This, in turn, created a safety issue as cars speed through neighbourhoods while residents are exercising or as children walk to school. This has led to Webster’s Estates putting up a security gate and to other neighbourhoods requesting speed-bumps or traffic cameras or more presence from community beat officers or other police officers.
To do my part, I have written to the National Roads Authority to request speed-bumps and pedestrian crossings in various areas, including in front of Cayman Prep school and St. Ignatius. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for a response. But I cannot really blame it on the NRA because they can only take instructions from the current government leadership. It is the poor leadership by the current government and what appears to be the attitude of those responsible for the area that the safety of our students is not a priority.
After years of silence on this and other issues, I think that it is time for a change. Something better. Someone who is not silent when it really matters.
Category: Polls, Viewpoints & Analysis, Viewpoint & Analysis
Too late the horse done gone thru the fence
a metro rail. car pooling, more bus on the road is not going to do it.
Roundabouts don’t work in rush hour.
All you need is the swoop of a pen. Cayman needs to make some of the roads one way so we do not all bottle neck in the same places. This is really easy to do.
1. All lanes on Crewe Rd going is is one way. all on Lindford Pierson going west are one way.
2. All Rds on Shamrock Rd from Newlands going west one way and all roads on the Est West Arterial going east is one way.
The solution is simple. Implement proper public transportation and change the laws so if you’re not allowed to have dependents on your work permit you can not own a vehicle.
I’ve said this about work permit holders for years! It should be one vehicle allowed per expat family. Instead, they come and every family member has a vehicle plus their nanny has one.
and what about Caymanians? They can have seven per family? Changes need to happen across the board, not discriminatory
Tax value, weight, and HP of private passenger vehicles. Why are individuals not in construction driving huge macho trucks or sports cars on an island with a 50mph limit?
So basically only the rich are allowed to have cars?
How will your nanny get to work on time to take your brats to school?
Shameful
Read all of these comments and not one hit the real problem which is roundabouts. You have no traffic control on roundabouts and they should only be used in town where speed limit is 15. I want to see which person running for office is brave enough to do this.
Disagree! Politicians and politicians wannabe are not qualified to find solutions to traffic problems.
Roundabouts are proven to be more efficient at allowing traffic to flow, over 4 ways, and stop lights.
The problem here is purely down to the idiotic drivers and idiotic designs.
ya, more effective than stop lights. That’s why they have had to dumb down the roundabouts so now there is more rules to roundabouts
and if they are more effective than stop lights, Why does the rest of the world use them, and not go to roundabouts?
Much safer than intersections! Ask a biker (#1 cause of motorcycle fatalities from other vehicles is in intersections).
Bermuda has had to bite this bullet long ago…they have no room to build more roads, so they have had to get draconian. They limit cars to one per household (maybe allow two here). You cannot buy a new car until you sell the old one or pay to have it scrapped. No personal imports allowed. Good public transport with large buses on established routes. Good private taxi system with (mostly) reliable licensed drivers who are GPS equipped. Simply but not easy, as they say…
I have 2 cars but can only drive one at a time. One’s for the weekends, the other’s more practical.
And car parks in many residential areas are filling up and people parking on sidewalks, yards, emergency access areas, etc. Sign of a neighborhood in decline: More cars than bedrooms. Don’t buy a condo there.
I live on a canal and work by a canal.
10 minutes by jet ski. Floating dock so quick launch.
I drive to the office every Saturday and drop my weeks worth of clothes and a clean towel.
Rain and traffic have no effect and I’m stress free. Been doing it for three years now!
Jamaica has car import duty of 100% and the cars must be under 8 years old. That will eliminate every bob, susy, bobo from importing crap and flipping them for a buck.
Except there are no great alternatives to a car in Cayman, if there was I for one wouldn’t drive.
You just make cars more expensive. Everyone will still buy one, just a garbage one for less money.
Unfortunately when you have a dingbat like Alden sit on a radio talk show with his convert Austin and tell the Cayman public that having multiple cars is a human right and getting a Cayman drivers license is also is What can you expect 40,000 cars on a 24 mile island! Now we have environmental Joe building more miles of road. 100k in 5 years at the current rate like our police the highest per capita in the world. Truly sad yet we keep electing them to power destroying our little island one road at a time.
Trams LOL. A sizeable section of our population can’t even negotiate a roundabout safely now you want to throw a tram in the mix too? Hahaha
Trams can be built above
Have to agree on the issues but not many solutions in this article. “People should car pool” isn’t a solution any more than “people should stop dropping litter” is a solution to littering.
Support with an app and suggested contribution?
Mr Lindsay – it’s all been rehashed before, nothing new in the list you’ve provided. Traffic is a consequence from an underlying problem, too much development outpacing infrastructure. Sure we could blame CPA and all the rest but the crux of the problem is MP’s bought by the developers to push the big dollar projects through. One more lateral step for you Mr Lindsay, – ‘MP’s bought by developers’ ???? – that’s right, ‘corruption’. There’s your ‘Excalibur’ for a purposeful election campaign right there, pull it from the stone and swing mightily.
flyover at hurleys
The only answer, two lanes both directions over the top of the roundabout. Probably too expensive
$200,000,000 for a High School is too expensive.
👎👎👎
Transportation and traffic engineers should find the solutions, not politicians.
Traffic engineering focuses mainly on research for safe and efficient traffic flow, such as road geometry, sidewalks and crosswalks, cycling infrastructure, traffic signs, road surface markings and traffic lights.
Transportation engineering focuses on providing safe, efficient, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and environmentally compatible movement of people and goods transport.
Transform bus transportation- there’s nothing to transform. Cayman has no public transportation system. Dilapidated mini buses with crazy drivers is not Public transportation. Nowhere in the world buses run 24 hr, there’s no need for that in Cayman.
Everything else he is offering, except ferries, is utopian, unrealistic and simply not suitable for the local conditions- lifestyle, mentality, climate, state of existing of roads etc.
Mr.Lindsay should stick to his area of expertise.
Yes there are places buses run 24hours….
Absolutely right!
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! ! Fundamental misunderstanding! That is why Cayman has so many problems- incompetence, incompetence, incompetence!
Let the cobbler stick to his last!
The world has figured it out like 100 years ago: public transportation.
Just look how it is done in Bermuda-smaller Island, more people and excellent public transportation.
This or Babs. Jesus wept
obviously we have many solutions to ponder! however, we lack commitment and leadership.
Hurley’s roundabout needs to be replaced with stoplights
worst idea ever…obviously trolling.
I think traffic lights at Hurleys is a good idea.
I also think all residential roads with schools should have HUGE speed bumps for 1/2 mile either side to stop speeding traffic & cars using them to beat the traffic (my daughter is at the Montessori on Prospect Point Road – just getting a crossing by the looks of it, but the existing mini speed bumps do nothing to slow the morning drivers using that road at 30+ mph to beat the traffic).
What about all the large construction trucks that are in traffic every morning? At least 5 near me when I am driving to work. They take up the space of two cars and have to leave gaps in front and behind them with how they drive. Horrible addition to traffic! They should have strict schedules outside of rush hour that focus on early morning and late night. A simple fix that I am sure would give some improvement. Not to mention that these big trucks have been involved in quite a few accidents recently whether hitting another car or dumping their sand and dirt on the road. I was behind a water truck yesterday that was spilling water as it drove and the day before that a cement truck was leaking cement on the three lane roundabout! This needs changing.
The problem isnt the ability to work at home, its employers allowing us to work from home!
The problem with this is that a lot of persons will still be on the road at rush hour peak times such as mornings and evenings to drop and pick up their kids even while working from home.
Private schools should be required to have school bus pick up/drop offs. All the rich expats live in the same area anyways…easy…
What about 4 wheel bikes or ATV’s. They hold two people plus some groceries. Only issue with these bikes is no protection from rain
You can’t filter effectively with them so it would be another mini cooper on the road.
I just keep an extra pair of clothes and stick of deodorant at work if it rains a morning I choose to motorcycle in to the office. Rain is a natural shower but riding a bicycle absolutely requires a shower.
I would wager 50% of office workers could work from home. Just imagine how that would reduce traffic in one fell swoop, but sadly it is the ego’s of bosses that have to be satisfied by being able to see all the people they control.
Еgos of bosses? Haven’t heard this one before. Wondering what you do at work.
You are probably an ego driven boss then! Driven by the need for continuous recognition by minions!
I fully agree. My organization’s policy fully allowed work from home, but our head of department kept getting cranky whenever someone said that they’d be working from home today.
Eventually we all just came back to the office, despite a good dozen laptops having been purchased to allow us to work from home.
I got my work done, and some, since I didn’t have to bother from traffic. However, I agree with the above. Some HODs need the validation of having minions under their noses.
Cayman islands is not educated enough to put a dent in the traffic, fix the dump, educate Caymanian children, have a thriving tourist section or anything else anyone else is doing. Their voted in leadership is perfectly suited to pretend to do anything and not get caught without a great excuse.
Agree with all of these.
In a year’s time, if nothing is done, Hurley’s roundabout is literally going to be a carpark. Indigo Bay, Periwinkle, Harbour Walk, Arvia all immediately adding to the volume of cars that are already fighting to get to work on time.
You would have thought that the planning department might foresee this issue but they’re just exhausted from rubber stamping every application that comes their way to look at the fine detail.
They’re mainly pie-in-the-sky nonsense. No-one is going to give up their car to ride a bus, carpool or get a water taxi.
Real solutions would be a flyover bridge over Hurley’s roundabout or imposing a minimum import duty fee which effectively stops the import of crappy old Japanese cars
Not a single mention of motorcycles? Bicycles are nice but not a feasible suggestion to truly put a dent in traffic. I can carry a passenger and about 2 bags of groceries in the cargo box of my lil 125cc.
It’s legal to split lanes (ride your motorcycle between cars in traffic) in Cayman, and as a motorcyclist I’ve done it plenty of times in front of the RCIPS so I can confirm it isn’t illegal. It’s also legal in the UK.
Every single day when GT gets gridlocked by traffic, I slowly go down the middle and pass right by all of the vehicles doing 2 mph. Likewise in the morning, I get to skip ALL the traffic coming from east. PLEASE let motorcyclists filter by instead of being an ass and blocking the road out of jealousy – that’s one less vehicle in traffic!
Cycling is nice for the environment, but consider that I get 100+ MPG on my 125cc motorcycle, but only 30 MPG car.
Why is there no incentive to ride a motorcycle? I pay the same amount to license it as my car, yet use a fraction of road and parking capacity.
125cc motorcycles and below should be totally duty free.
Electric pedal assist bicycles can reach speeds of 15mph + and ideal for cruising through traffic. Many people are afraid to ride bikes because of the poor driving standards.
Bike or Bicycle doesn’t matter, same risk. You still share the road with everyone.
Motorbikes attract massive import duty too. It’s so ridiculous.
I have one, and it just allows me to cruise through traffic, and see all the drivers sat on their phones.
LOL I need a helmet cam just for this!
A dark skin woman in a white jaguar SUV cussed me out at the cricket pitch stop light last month because I rolled up beside her and gestured a “no-no” because she was holding the phone to her ear going around the CNB roundabout with no indicator on, right down to the stop light! All I could do was laugh and say really? You’re part of the reason why driving in Cayman is horrible.
What relevance does the woman’s skin tone have in this story?
so as not to imply that it was the blonde woman who has a white Jag SUV
Paying for a motorcycle license should come with a free public transit pass for the duration of the license to reward those who use less road and parking space honestly.
I like your theory and rode motorcycles in central London for a decade but I wouldn’t think of riding one here. With driving standards here it’s only a matter of time before someone kills you.
Excellent ideas. SAFE bike lanes, especially, would be great on such a flat island. Kids should be able to bike safely to school, with crossing guards where necessary.
You failed to address the elephant in the room, taxi fares. No vote for you.
Too many people here.
Mr. Lindsay,
While I am grateful that you could address the issue at hand, nothing you have said in here is anything more than what we have been saying on CNS for years.
GTS is not the best for dealing with traffic but it’s hardly even close to what we in Prospect and beyond deal with daily. We have asked for a reliable bus service for years, nothing. We have asked for uber to be allowed so our life savings doesn’t just go to the taxi mafia, denied. We have wondered why the road by the horse stables hasn’t been widened like the rest of the bypass, connected family.
All actual solutions are easily implemented and not just lip service to us with small children who have to get up so early just to get a nutritious meal in them before the long commute that should only take 10 minutes.
Limiting the households cars isn’t the answer because I can only drive one at a time anyway. Public school buses are a great idea but hardly even used by the public school kids. We know this because of how many parents are still dropping off their children to public schools and backing up traffic. The private schools should have a bus system, I agree. But suggesting you mix the private and public students together is not the solution as you would see many students mocked and bullied for where they go to school. Rivalry between schools is nothing new.
Finish the widening of roads you started. Enforce the traffic laws, make the cops do their damn jobs. Move civil service to Bodden Town. Make public school kids take the bus to school or get rid of the busses and use those as a public bus system. Build a bridge from Savannah to Camana. Just do something.
Cannot support limiting vehicles to households. Many households now are forced to have adult children living at home. They work shifts and need their own transportation. If everything becomes restricted and expensive it will not be of any benefit to the Caymanian people who have regular jobs
“Many households now are forced to have adult children living at home.” Many? Really? I can think of one or two out of all the households I know and those “adults” still live there due to poor choices in what they spend money on. They could afford to live elsewhere but waste their money on non-necessary luxury items…..particularly cars!
Banging a head against a brick wall. Unfortunately we’ve imported the American culture to cars here. The arms race of massive SUVs and pickups, of which about 15% are truly needed, the rest are ego massaging vehicles.
A bus lane, with professional, courteously driven buses…not those little tin can fleet of Toyotas, would make a massive difference. With apps and bus stops linked to show where/ when a bus is due to arrive, even waiting would be reduced to a minimum.
Unfortunately, buses and taxis are the breadwinners for many an uneducated local, who would soon be without a job. Hence why there’s no uber or similar. That flex nonsense is not uber either.
Fix that situation, and someone will get a medal.
Cycling is great, but the driving and roads are terrible and not enough employers have showering facilities.
Car imports bring in revenues, so that needs addressing too. Limit to one per person every 2 years perhaps? In any case, I’m fed up of seeing adverts for 10 year old cars newly arrived that will be scrap within 5 years.
Basically, nothing is changing, buy a motorbike and pray a lot.
My 10 year old import is 25 years old now and still runs well. If you take care of your 2nd hand vehicles and service them regularly you will be surprised how long they can last
That’s nice, and true, but that’s the exception to the rule. Many cars here that are 15+ years old, really shouldn’t be on the road and are only managing to do so because a friend ‘inspected’ them. The old Hondas with cracked windows are everywhere.
I’ve had my truck 18 years and still going!
The 1st step is a good public transport system. Leave all others as steps 2, 3 etc., if they’re ever needed.
Many people, especially some WP holders would use a good bus system instead of owning a car.
Ever been to the Vehicle Licensing Dept.? Who would want to endure that shit if they didn’t have to??
Can I add that adding crosswalks all around town also does not help traffic….not sure who’s bright idea that was but they should either be timed to allow a flow of traffic and people or there should be over or underpasses.
Whichever idiot put those things in, and allows pedestrians to cross like ducks, instead of all together needs firing. It must have been a three year old who came up with that! And teach people that the left lane is for slow traffic FFS!
I agree! Even worse – they positioned the buttons so that a pedestrian pushes and immediately enters the crosswalk. NO consideration for driver reaction time!! They cannot factor-in any person’s habits so, design the crosswalk so that the button is far enough away to give the pedestrian a few moments before stepping out!!
God forbid, someone is going to get hit on a crosswalk and it may not be the driver’s fault but look who will get prosecuted!!
Or, perhaps if drivers stopped coming around the bend at 40 mph instead of the prescribed 25 and paid attention to the road and pedestrians instead of the phone, time to stop wouldn’t be an issue.