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What a Difference a Road Makes

Blacktop lifelines bring progress to millions in Asia, but roads also have a dark side. . . .

ROAD WORK A road crew in northeast Pakistan tackles a landslide. Building and maintaining roads are key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

GETTING BY A bus jam-packed with passengers drives through after a crew clears rubble. Roads bring a mix of positive and negative factors to society.
Photo by James Hutchison

Nose to nose with an ancient overloaded bus grinding uphill with passengers draped over its sides and roof, a four-wheel drive SUV slithers backward in retreat up a rain-soaked trail with barely a meter of loose dirt between its wheels and a 200 meter vertical plunge into the river below. The driver finally reaches a bend wide enough for the bus to inch past, the third time he has performed this hair-raising maneuver on a rollercoaster bypass around a landslide blocking the road in northeast Pakistan.

“This is how it was driving in these mountains before proper roads were built,” explains the SUV driver, grinning almost nostalgically. Here in the foothills of the Himalayas, it is easy to see what happens when the blacktop lifelines that take people to work on time, to the hospital when they are sick, and deliver food, suddenly vanish. This is exactly what happened here at 8:52 in the morning on Saturday, 8 October 2005, when a massive earthquake struck, taking an estimated 80,000 lives.

Landslides damaged or destroyed 6,400 kilometers (km) of roads in nine districts. With more than 3 million homeless, hungry and injured facing winter snows, building and restoring roads became a race for life. In an extraordinary effort of multi-agency cooperation, and an engineering featcosting billions, an army of road crews and machinery operating around the clock averted an even worse disaster as relief supplies and building materials flowed in.

At Rara Village, an hour from Muzaffarabad, community leader Aboul Latif proudly shows there is little sign of devastation in Rara village, which was badly hit with 17 killed. Today, there are only homeowners finishing up 135 new dwellings, thanks to a 2 km road bulldozed last year to bring in reconstruction material and link the village to the main road for the first time.

Before the road, Mr. Latif ’s daughter Ruqaya fell and injured her head while working in their field. It took so long to get her to the main road by donkey that she ended up disabled. “That would never happen now,” says Mr. Latif. “We are just 10 minutes away by car.”

The community of 700 maintains the road. Incomes have risen as farmers get better prices by bringing produce to market themselves, supplies are cheaper as transportation is a fraction of what it cost before, and children now attend high school. “Nothing has improved our lives as much as the new road,” says Mr. Latif.

Virtually no large infrastructure project can begin without a road, and none can better the lives of people within its reach in so many sectors, especially in developing countries, where new roads help achieveMillennium Development Goals by relieving poverty and malnutrition, and providing greater access to health care and education.

Even in secluded Bhutan the government understands that modern roads underpin progress. People who imagine Bhutan a near mythical Shangri-La tucked in the far reaches of the Himalayas are surprised to hear that more than 4,000 km of roads have been built since the first car arrived in 1961, a remarkable achievement in one of the most mountainous countries in the world.

Modern roads fit well with the Buddhist country’s famed Happiness Index: people are naturally happier when they have better job opportunities, goods at cheaper prices, and electricity in their homes from hydro powerplants, all made possible by roads. Sangey Tenzing, directorgeneral of Bhutan’s Department of Roads, says there is ever greater pressure from people in isolated regions to build more roads. Bef ore the spectacular East–West highway spanned the country, travelers from the capital of Thimpu were forced to cross into India to reach Trongsa, now just a day’s drive down the highway. Severe poverty has also diminished in settlements along the 328 km route.

New roads in Southeast Asia are also drawing old enemies closer together. “Narrow dirt trails that were once used to transport refugees and military hardware have given way to modern highways carrying electronic goods, exotic fruits, and tourists,” says Arjun Thapan, director general of the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia Department, of the new East–West Economic Corridor between the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Thailand, and Viet Nam.

As of June this year, commercial trucks from Thailand and Viet Nam are able to enter each others’ territory for the first time to deliver and pick up goods following an exchange of traffic rights and the introduction of a regional customs transit system. Containers sealed for the duration of the trip prevent theft and damage to the 1,200 commercial vehicles—400 from each country that have initially been provided with permits to enter neighboring countries.

“Because of the progress these countries have made, trade and tourism will prosper further. You can now set out from Thailand, do business in the Lao PDR, and arrive in time for dinner at Danang in Viet Nam— all in the space of a single day,” says Mr. Thapan.

The East–West Economic Corridor encompasses a road link about 1,450 km long and when completed, it will be the only direct, continuous land route between the Indian Ocean in Myanmar and the South China Sea in Viet Nam. Linked with the North–South and Southern corridors, the ambitious trio of routes will integrate the economies of the six Greater Mekong Subregion nations and bring them together as never before.

Before the southern route was completed linking Cambodia, Thailand, and Viet Nam, travel between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh was a long and grueling affair on old buses that frequently broke down on potholed roads flooded by monsoon rains. Today, the smooth half-day trip by air-conditioned coach on the new highway is a bargain at $12. New businesses flourish along the route from tourist hotels and small vendors to manufacturing plants, promoting trade and cooperation in a formerly conflict-torn area.

NO BETTER OPTION A motorized rickshaw carries at least 10 passengers in Cambodia.
Photo by James Hutchison

“Hopefully, by 2015, much progress will have been made in reaching the Millennium Development Goals but this achievement will be cruelly overshadowed if the largely avoidable slaughter of the young on the world’s roads continues unchecked. This epidemic on wheels—which already kills on the scale of malaria—will continue to rob even more families of their loved ones and their livelihoods, as the number of those killed doubles to well over two million per year by 2030,” wrote Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety in the introduction to Make Roads Safe—A Decade of Action for Road Safety.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan notes in the 2009 Global Status Report on Road Safety that more than 1.2 million people die on the world’s roads each year, and as many as 50 million others are injured. Over 90% of these deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries, which have only 48% of the world’s registered vehicles. Pedestrians, cyclists, and riders of motorized two-wheelers and their passengers are the most vulnerable road users, accounting for around 46% of global road traffic deaths, which actress Michelle Yeoh, global ambassador of Make Roads Safe, calls the world’s most neglected epidemic.

The estimated cost of road accidents in the developing world is now $100 billion a year, and rising, as more new roads are built and traffic increases with scant attention to safety. In India, an estimated 2 million people have a disability as a result of a road traffic crash. Make Roads Safe points out that road safety could prove a significant economic boost for poor nations. Every dollar spent on road safety in the developing world would save up to $20 in improved productivity, health, and earnings, the report concludes.

Traffic accidents cost low-income and middle-income countries between 1% and 2% of their gross national product (GNP), more than the total development aid they receive, according to the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention by the World Bank and WHO. While a decrease of about 30% in road crashes is forecast in high-income countries, a huge escalation is anticipated in low-income and middle-income countries, no surprise to anyone who has travelled the roads of Asia’s developing countries. Even on new highways, decrepit speeding vehicles with bald tires jockey for space with truck traffic and swarms of motorcycles ridden by entire families without helmets, the largest source of casualties.

The Asian Injury Prevention Foundation distributed more than 400,000 child helmets to primary schools throughout Cambodia, the Lao PDR, Thailand, and Viet Nam as part of its Helmets for Kids program and the organization’s nonprofit Protec Helmet Company developed the world’s first tropical helmet and child motorbike helmet standards. Viet Nam has cut motorcycle road deaths by enforcing crash helmet laws.

In Cambodia, road traffic accidents are now the largest noncommunicable health burden. Roads in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are among the most dangerous in the world. Research by the Medical School of Jinan University in Guangzhou showed the figure for all traffic accidents in the PRC in 1951 was around 6,000. By 2004, it had risen to more than 770,000, with 560,000 injured and 110,000 people losing their lives per year—an astounding eight times the death rate of the United States.

Reflecting new concern by development organizations, the first ever United Nations Ministerial Conference on Global Road Safety will be held from 19 to 20 November 2009 in Moscow. This is the first time road safety is being considered and discussed at such a high level.

The first broad assessment of the road safety situation in 178 countries, the Global Status Report on Road Safety, reveals pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists make up almost half of those killed on roads, highlighting the need for these road users to be given priority in road safety programs. The report points out that in many countries road safety laws are woefully inadequate, and enforcement should be strengthened to include increasing the number of traffic police combating speeding and drunk driving, and making the use of motorcycle helmets, seat belts and vehicle safety checks all mandatory. When new roads are designed, provision needs to be made to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists, and innovations such as dedicated motorcycle lanes, a safety feature of the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway in Malaysia that has had a dramatic impact on preventing road fatalities and injuries involving motorcycles.

In June 2009 in Mumbai, the first owner of the Tata Nano was handed by the head of Tata Motors the keys to the world’s cheapest car. The company says it has received more than 200,000 orders for the car, which costs about $2,000, and expects millions of Indians will give up their motorcycles for a Nano. Environmentalists warn that pollution will soar as the lowcost cars will further clog India’s crowded roads.

In Asia’s traffic choked cities, vehicle exhaust is now a major contributor to urban air pollution, climate change, and diseases such as lung cancer and heart disease. Traffic jams in Shanghai and Bangkok have reduced average weekday motor vehicle speeds to as low as 10 km per hour, slower than the millions of bicycles they have driven from urban roads. With Thailand’s vehicle fleet of about 25 million growing at an astounding rate of 10% a year, no number of new highways can cope.

Even on the streets of Bhutan’s capital, traffic jams and parking problems are beginning to appear as the number of vehicles increases by 12% a year. Roadside vehicle pollution from gridlocked traffic, broken up sidewalks, and open manhole covers in Manila present a hostile environment for pedestrians. Where sidewalks do exist, they are often crammed with vendors, forcing those on foot out into dangerous traffic. When roads are forced to bear far more traffic than they were designed to handle through poor planning and lack of efficient public mass transit, they turn toxic and dangerous, harming instead of helping.

Singapore imposed expensive restrictions on drivers to curb the number of cars and reduce pollution and fuel-wasting gridlock. In addition to a driver’s license, a Certificate of Entitlement is required, costing several thousand Singapore dollars. This permits the vehicle to be driven for 10 years, then it must be scrapped. Certain roads in Singapore require users to pay per use via Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing system. These measures also provide incentive to use an efficient public transport system.

COSTLY DANGERS The estimated cost of road accidents in the developing world is now $100 billion a year, and rising, as more new roads are built and traffic increases with scant attention to safety.
Photo by James Hutchison

When a new rural road opens, benefits are immediate: faster travel times, cheaper transported goods, and lower vehicle maintenance, to name a few. But without careful planning those benefits can be insidiously overshadowed by unintended problems. With easier access to cities, an exodus of labor may follow, sometimes leaving families without a breadwinner. Road construction and increased COSTLY DANGERS The estimated cost of road accidents in the developing world is now $100 billion a year, and rising, as more new roads are built and traffic increases with scant attention to safety. commercial traffic brings an influx of lonely men with cash in their pockets, fueling drug use, the sex trade, and rising rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Studies in Bangladesh, India, and the PRC show a high HIV prevalence among longdistance truckers.

Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP) Report 2005 shows that education is effective in reducing high-risk behavior. Before HIV prevention campaigns began in 1996 in Tamil Nadu in southern India, 30% of truck drivers and their helpers reported having sex with a female sex worker in the preceding 12 months, and just over half had used a condom the last time they bought sex. By 2002, that had fallen to just 2% as fewer men bought sex and condom use rose to over 90% during 6 years of prevention programming and education.

From drawing board to ribbon cutting, roads cost vast sums to build and maintain. They should not become a major source of death and disease for lack of proper planning, management and regulation, say experts. Roadways should fulfill the role for which they were intended—to improve lives and reduce poverty.

In the end, the difference a road makes depends on how people use it. •