Our Desk | Chill. Congestions mean wealth

Anthony Lam

Over the past several weekends, the main residential areas of the Peninsula, spanning from the Reservoir and the Guia Hill – along the several major roads – to Fai Chi Kei, Inner Harbor and T’oi San, have been badly congested.
Notifications from the Transport Affairs Bureau (DSAT) keep popping up to “remind or inform” people that in the region – nearly one-third of the Peninsula’s area –roads, streets and alleyways are full of cars which can barely move.
Reasons for the traffic congestion are unclear. The DSAT did not offer any explanation. It’s understandable. I can’t imagine it deploys a team to conduct a survey of people who are already infuriated by the congestion about the reason they are there and unfortunately stuck in a deadlock.
I myself think that it’s because they need to go back to the traditional resident regions to visit their families, take their older family members for outing, or taking their children to those regions for extracurricular lessons, be those piano, fencing, swimming, English, Mathematics or Portuguese classes.
Apart from disseminating mobile notifications, the DSAT hasn’t been seen to do anything effective to ease the situation. The congestion has been even worse than normal times when Macau received 40 million visitors per year and nearly topped the World GDP Per Capita List.
There’s something effective the DSAT has done, though. It has called off the “bus-only” lane on Avenida do Coronel Mesquita. Its original plan was to designate the left lane – in certain areas – as a bus-only lane, similar to the previous designation on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, more famously known as the Sun Ma Lou, which has also been “suspended to facilitate recovery mission after Typhoon Hato.” The suspension has not been lifted.
Back to Avenida do Coronel Mesquita: the DSAT has never addressed the fact the buses running on certain routes must cross three full lanes from the bus stop on the leftmost lane near the Dom Bosco Football Field to the rightmost lane in order to make a right turn at the traffic light as part of its service.
When placed at an angle, a 10-meter or so bus can easily block the flow of the entire avenue – just imagine that taking place during rush hour in the morning.
The Municipal Affairs Bureau has just published the computer graphics for a “provisional” leisure area two blocks from the Taipa Central Park. That’s a wonderful proposal indeed, for Taipa has become more residential over the past couple of decades, making leisure areas more important for the health and livelihood of not only people living there, but also those in other regions of the city.
However, the word “provisional” concerns me as much as the bureau not explaining how the architecturally and aesthetically meaningful structure of a former factory would be saved. The tilted roofs of the factory structures could now be used to inform how architectural designs can help let sunlight in and save energy.
Oops, back on track. The bureau said the “park” would be built with minimal drilling and work. The implication I got is that it wouldn’t be building a car park there. I think the government should plan ahead as it’s very likely the car park at the Central Park will easily be filled in the future, as the new shopping mall – housing a cineplex and some of the most popular brands – gradually swings into full operation.