Where in Copenhagen can you park like that?” The fearsome
hi-viz-clad female traffic warden barked at my friend who was picking me
up from the airport in the Danish capital. The normal, well-oiled
machine that is Danish traffic had been thrown a curve ball by the
unannounced building works at the airport entrance and my friend, while
technically infringing the traffic law, had only pulled over momentarily
to get her bearings.
But
apparently that’s enough to incur the wrath of authority in this neck
of the woods. A card outlining how the temporary traffic flow worked was
thrust through the passenger window and we were sent on our way with a
warning.
I tried my best to mollify the situation by explaining to
my friend that the incident should be seen as an example of why Danish
society is so envied. “Take Lebanon for example,” I said cheerily. “The
government is only now trying to implement a plan to introduce proper
pavements and a public transport system. Imagine.”
And
it’s true; we are. Just last week, parliament’s Public Works Committee
unveiled a complex “road map” aimed at improving infrastructure for
public transport services to tackle the horrendous traffic that plagues
much of Beirut and its suburbs.
The head of the committee said
they were working with the World Bank to adopt something called the Bus
Rapid Transit or BRT. A random trawl of the internet told me that BRT
was … wait for it …”a city-based, high-speed bus transit system in which
buses travel on dedicated routes”. Amazing. A regular bus service in
other words?
But
there was more: “BRT is already widely implemented in both the
developed and developing worlds and research shows that [it] can reduce
travel time by millions of hours for commuters worldwide”, which I guess
is think tank speak for “less cars on the road eases traffic”. Who
knew?
Which is on the face of it all well and good, but getting
the Lebanese, the most non-collegiate of people to abandon their cars
and go to work together is going to be a big ask and says a lot about
how dysfunctional we are as a nation. In fact, I can’t, off the top of
my head, think of another country in which the use of public transport
is so scorned upon as it is in Lebanon.
Many
western tourists are, quite rightly, flabbergasted by the lack of
decent public transport, especially in such a small country with
relatively few main arterial roads and freeways and this must surely be a
factor as to why Lebanon has not been able to attract more western
tourists than it does.
At a dinner about 10 years ago, I admitted
to sometimes taking the bus from my home in the east Beirut district of
Achrafieh to my bank on Hamra street in the west of the city. More than
anything, I explained, I avoided the nightmare of finding a place to
park on a busy Saturday.
My
confession was initially met with laughter but when my fellow guests
realised I meant it, there was a moment’s silence, before one brave soul
piped up and said “Good for you. I mean why not?” There followed
similar murmurs of agreement but you knew they’d rather be hacked to
death by a hate mob than ride a bus themselves.
Anyway, moving on.
Other promises in this latest initiative include a pledge to enforce
traffic violations, which would indeed bring in much-needed revenues
into the state coffers and hopefully reduce the needless death and
destruction that is on our roads daily. Also on the agenda is getting
rid of illegal taxis and the widening of roads and the pavements.
The
last bit reminded me of a conversation I had with a cab driver a few
years ago. For as we all know, it is a truth universally acknowledged
that taxi drivers are fonts of wisdom and this chap was no exception
when he pointed out that no matter how wide the roads were in Beirut
there would always be only enough space for one car. “The rest is taken
up with double or even triple parking,” he said, motioning with his
cigarette to the rows of cars illegally parked, in plain view of the
cops who were, as Beirut cops tend to do, standing around, drinking
coffee and smoking.
Meanwhile, in Denmark it is not uncommon for government ministers to cycle to work. We can but live in hope.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
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