Traffic congestion has been one of the obvious and significant
problems in Phnom Penh. Besides public stress on the road due to the
traffic jams, traffic congestion impacts negatively on the environment
and the economy. How much money have people burned uselessly through the
gasoline consumption while sitting in a traffic jam? How much time
have people wasted as a result of traffic congestion? The reality is
that this happens every day, especially from 6 am to 8 am, and 4 pm to 7
pm. Needless to say, resolving this issue has the potential to make
Phnom Penh a better city economically and environmentally. In order to
come up with solutions we first need to understand why traffic
congestion has become such an issue. This begs the question: “Is the
traffic congestion in Phnom Penh mainly the result of urban
development?”
Urban development, by its nature brings more people into a city.
Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia, and it is the heart of
various forms of development including infrastructure, services, and
health care. For the last decade there has been a trend which has seen
people in rural areas moving to find jobs and build new lives in the
city. In 2011 it was estimated that 100,000 residents had migrated to
Phnom Penh, increasing its population to approximately 2 million
people. At the same time, according to the Cambodia’s Transportation
Ministry’s report released in the same year, there was an estimated
800,000 motorbikes and 170,000 vehicles in Phnom Penh. These numbers are
anticipated to continue to increase every day.
Two of the common causes of the traffic jams anywhere are small roads
and too many vehicles. While these increases in population and vehicle
usage have been happening, the numbers of roads and their sizes in Phnom
Penh have remained more or less the same. This seems to suggest a clear
link between urbanization and traffic congestion: more people with more
vehicles and limited expansion of the road network. However, according
to some people in Phnom Penh we have interviewed, the key causes of
traffic congestion are beyond the urban development.
When asked what he thought of as the main causes of traffic
congestion in the city, Sopheap, who is a student at Royal University of
Fine Arts, said that urban development is unquestionably one of the
reasons to cause traffic jams. Nonetheless, to him the issue that first
needs to be dealt with is that of people disobeying the traffic laws. He
added, “Many of the time, it is not the small roads that is the problem
but how people drive, and even a motorbike could cause the whole
traffic jam if the traffic laws are not obeyed.”
Sok Hout, a student in SETECH Institute, he pointed out another
common cause of traffic jams. He said that traffic jams happen more
frequently in rainy season because when there is heavy rain many roads
would get flooded, causing un-flooded roads to be even busier. As a
result, people get stuck on the roads for hours. You can imagine what a
significant issue this is given that rainy season lasts six months a
year.
These students have highlighted real issues in Phnom Penh experienced
by all of its residents, in addition to the problems that arise from
urbanization. As such, all of these issues need to be addressed in order
to reduce traffic congestion. So far, we have efforts from the
government to reconstruct some roads as well as build the Skybridges,
such as the 7 Makara Skybridge, to ease the problem of traffic
congestion in the city. Nevertheless, the traffic law enforcement and
the sewage system are still seen to have limited improvement even though
they are key factors to making traffic in Phnom Penh a lot better and
less busy.
Source: Urban Voice
