Last week there was a front page article in the paper about some positive steps the NRA was making to alleviate the traffic on West Bay Road.

“Minister of Works Arden McLean announced the plan last Friday at the Cabinet press briefing, saying Cayman had been in a traffic “stranglehold” for far too long.

Mr. McLean explained that two traffic lanes on West Bay Road will be created coming into town from West Bay.

To start with, the lane configuration will be introduced between the mini roundabout next to the Galleria Shopping Centre and the northern boundary of the Hyatt Regency, a stretch of about 500 feet.

“The left lane will only be able to turn on to the by–pass,” said Mr. McLean. “And you will not be able to change lanes.”

I can sum up this “positive step” in one sentence: Two Monkeys Fucking A Football. In other words, it's a whole lot of action with no results. The problem with West Bay Road traffic in the morning (and I consider myself an expert since I spend close to an hour in it every day) is not because of the mini roundabout by the Lone Star. By the time you get there, the traffic is smooth sailing.

The problems are many, here are a few:

1. The Ritz Carlton. There was a letter to the editor in the paper last week as well complaining about West Bay Road traffic, placing a lot of the blame on “the many times the workers at the Ritz walk out into the road with their little stop signs, and no one moves north or south without a very long delay.” They're certainly part of the problem. Starting at 630am, workers start arriving at the jobsite, turning left to park on the side of the road, blocking traffic for less than a second, but it causes a caterpillar effect and before you know it, traffic is at a standstill at 4-way stop.
2. The Strand. For whatever reason, traffic always seems to come to a crawl at the road where The Strand intersects West Bay Road. It isn't like there are a lot of people who live back there behind The Strand, but there's always a car or two who are trying to get out onto the road, and someone, thinking they're being courteous, stops to let them out. Do they not realize that they're being DIS-courteous to all the traffic behind them.
3. Safehaven. This is also part of the Ritz-Carlton stretch. It is illegal to turn left at the Courtyard Marriot or Governor's Harbor between 7am and 9am mon-fri. That doesn't really seem to apply to most people. One morning last week, so many cars turned at the Marriott (and some of them didn't even wait to get to the road, but cut the corner by driving across the vacant lot on the corner!) that there was a good 50 yards behind me to the next car in traffic behind me. Sure those few jackasses who break the law cut 10-15 minutes off their commute, but by creating more traffic where the road comes back out, they're making traffic worse for everyone else.
4. Lack of enforcement of traffic laws in the last paragraph. FINALLY last week I saw a cop car sitting on the road to deter people from turning both at the marriott and governor's harbor. Another place that people “cut” and create more traffic is turning down Boggy Sands Road near West Bay public beach and coming out at 4-way stop. I saw a cop back there one morning, but they need to be more consistent.

There's a new Vespa/Piaggio shop that just opened up last month or so down on Mary Street, and I'm going to go down and check them out one of these days. They're out of my price range, but that's just a cashflow issue. I just dropped $50CI to fill up my gas tank in my jeep. It's just a 4-cyl jeep, not the 4.0l 6-cylinder one, it's not that much of a gas hog. That $50 of gas (@4.25CI/gallon) will last me about 10 days. During the summer when school is out and traffic is only half as bad as it is now, I get just over 300 miles per tank. Right now, sitting idling in traffic for near an hour in the morning, Im pushing it and getting 220 miles per tank.

The advertising for the 50cc scooters are touting 60-100mpg. 220 miles and 12 gallons puts my MPG at 16.666. Scooter insurance is about $150/year, compared to $1,100 for my jeep (before discount). Just on the fuel costs alone, a scooter would “pay for itself”  pretty quickly. Add to that the “quality of life” of not getting stressed out/road rage/starting the day crabby and grumpy and sweaty by the time I get to work, and the ROI of a scooter comes down to a matter of months. Maybe I can work out a financing deal with the dealership for some free advertising? :D