Queuing Up
Editorial
Kaieteur News
April 21, 2007
It has been famously conceded that it would be quite a feat for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Yet, at various locations across the country, Guyanese regularly attempt equivalent feats with cynical insouciance.
Take the situation at the Demerara Harbour Bridge, especially from the East Bank Entrance at Peter's Hall. When the Bridge is closed to vehicular traffic (that is, it is open to ocean going vessels), the approach is quickly filled to capacity with buses, cars and trucks. Bridge employees direct drivers into the more accessible lanes. Because of the vast number of vehicles, however, very quickly there are invariably more queues created than there are toll gates. No problem up to then, apart from the tedium of waiting, and all proceed reasonably smoothly.
All hell breaks loose, though, when the gates are about to be opened. The sight of the Demerara Harbour Bridge crew returning to base from inspection of the closure of the retracting span serves like a bugle call, as in the race tracks. Drivers, who had kept their eyes peeled for the tell-tale sign, rush madly to their vehicles and a roar erupts as hundreds of engines are started and revved. The madness begins when the drivers in the “extra” queues detect the “true” lanes through the latter's steady movement as opposed to their relative stagnation.
This is when the Guyanese practice of “boring” begins. Practised to a fine art by the minibus drivers, a kind of brinkmanship ensues where the “extra-queue” driver edges into the merest sliver of space left between two lateral vehicles. In normal circumstances, one might have expected the driver in the lucky queue to allow the “borer” to get a “squeeze”, but the circumstances are anything but normal at the bridge.
Even the innate Guyanese chivalry towards women is suspended. In the dog-eat-dog morality that prevails, any such kindness would be rewarded by the drivers behind the “borer” constituting themselves into a seamless new moving queue and leaving the good Samaritan to the mercies of the rest of the now moribund old queue.
Inevitably, tempers get frayed, especially when some drivers refuse to blink in the game of brinkmanship and metal meets metal in a grinding crunch. More frequently, bumpers nudge bumpers, and someone – normally the “borer”-- has to back off. The pantomime that ensues in either case is worthy of the stage. Both drivers hop out from behind their wheels, arms flailing and pointing in various directions, including the sky. Blame is mouthed and ritually denied.
In all of this, what is noteworthy, and is the point of this editorial, is the usual absence of any official (Bridge or Police) to either act to avert the phenomenon of “boring” or to deal condignly with its consequences. What makes the situation even more intolerable is that even when the bemused drivers make it past the toll booths, they end up into an even more chaotic situation. This is where the attempt is made to push the now quite plump camel through the eye of the needle.
At this juncture, there is not even an attempt by the Bridge officials to guide the multiple queues of vehicles onto the single westbound lane of the Bridge. The result is an absolute gridlock that precipitates a new and even more intense bout of gnashing of teeth and worse.
The need for an acceptance that there must be an order and sequence in the successful management of crowds and other agglomerations of people was made clear in the lead-up to the World Cup. We successfully took up the challenge, and our crowd control procedures were outstanding. It was based primarily on having officials – in most cases young volunteers and even children (Scouts and guides) instruct individuals on the rules to be followed.
Surely this is not beyond the capabilities of the team that runs the Demerara Harbour Bridge, which has paid employees to execute its mandate.