Marc De Ver­teuil

As I walk along the road­side, a friend stops her car, rolls down the win­dow and asks me: "Are you mad?" It's not an un­rea­son­able ques­tion, con­sid­er­ing I am walk­ing on the road­way of Sad­dle Road in Mar­aval. There is no side­walk. The on­ly way to walk is to stick to the ex­treme side of the road, and stay out of the way of the re­lent­less stream of crawl­ing ve­hi­cles. I ex­plain to my friend that I am walk­ing for en­joy­ment. She con­cludes: "You are mad," and crawls on, much to the re­lief of traf­fic-jammed com­muters be­hind her.

Sad­dle Road is typ­i­cal of the traf­fic ar­ter­ies that con­nect Port-of-Spain with her sub­urbs. It's a con­gest­ed road with dis­joint­ed seg­ments of pave­ment. There is bare­ly enough room for cars, none for cy­clists. Walk­ing on the pave­ment must be done with cau­tion. Man­hole cov­ers are miss­ing. The pave­ment was en­gi­neered so that every cou­ple of yards there's a big dip where dri­ve­ways are and some­times the pave­ment in­ex­plic­a­bly just ends.

This is an ur­ban ob­sta­cle course. That's prob­a­bly the rea­son why I rarely meet any­body else walk­ing the route. If there are pedes­tri­ans, they are usu­al­ly just peo­ple wait­ing for a pri­vate taxi. It is dif­fi­cult to ig­nore that some of these com­muters are so im­pos­si­bly obese that you won­der how they fit three-across on the back­seat of a for­eign-used pulling bull. Maybe if they walked a bit more? But then, oh yeah, there is no side­walk.

Port-of-Spain is not a large city. The sub­urbs of Laven­tille, Mor­vant, Cas­cade, St Ann's, Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin are most­ly with­in a 10 km ra­dius of In­de­pen­dence Square. That dis­tance can be eas­i­ly cy­cled in half an hour pro­vid­ed there are ded­i­cat­ed and safe bike paths. Short­er dis­tances, say from home to the su­per­mar­ket, are usu­al­ly no more than one or two km for most peo­ple.

The ben­e­fits of foot and bi­cy­cle paths would be tremen­dous. Bet­ter use of time, in­creased health, de­creased waist lines and im­proved men­tal health. Af­ter all, ex­er­cise re­leas­es feel-good en­dor­phins that help beat de­pres­sion. It goes to show that a city's in­fra­struc­ture not on­ly de­ter­mines how we trav­el but it al­so shapes our bod­ies. But more than that, a city's in­fra­struc­ture can al­so in­flu­ence our minds, our moods, have an ef­fect on crime, mar­i­tal hap­pi­ness, di­vorce rates and even de­ter­mine how long we live.

The dai­ly com­mute can last an hour or more. Some­times much more. Dur­ing this com­mute we are con­front­ed with bore­dom, a feel­ing of help­less­ness, ag­gres­sion, dan­ger­ous road con­di­tions like un­ex­pect­ed pot­holes and dan­gling tele­phone lines. Com­mut­ing is stress­ful and it takes its toll on us.

Here's how it works. A 2012 re­port pub­lished in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pre­ven­ta­tive Med­i­cine by Chris­tine M Hoehn­er and col­leagues from the Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine in St Louis and the Coop­er In­sti­tute in Dal­las, found that long com­mutes (ie in T&T: be­ing stuck in traf­fic) is linked to an in­creased risk of ear­ly car­dio­vas­cu­lar death, high­er BMI, high blood pres­sure, an in­creased risk of de­vel­op­ing high blood sug­ar and high cho­les­terol. The re­searchers al­so linked long com­mutes to anx­i­ety, so­cial iso­la­tion and de­pres­sion.

A 2015 Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty study led by Seena Fazel found that peo­ple who are di­ag­nosed with de­pres­sion are three times as like­ly to com­mit vi­o­lent crimes in­clud­ing homi­cide and do­mes­tic abuse. I in no way want to stig­ma­tise de­pressed peo­ple as be­ing vi­o­lent of­fend­ers, I my­self have suf­fered from bouts of de­pres­sion, but the da­ta is sig­nif­i­cant.

What do you think, is there any pos­si­bil­i­ty that our ex­treme mur­der rate is linked to our ex­treme traf­fic con­ges­tion? Do you re­mem­ber Den­ni­son Rod­ney who was shot ten times in a road rage in­ci­dent in Diego Mar­tin in 2014? In 2016 a man in Ch­agua­nas smashed the win­dows of a ve­hi­cle with a gar­den hoe. Now think of all the tragedies that hap­pen when irate, tired traf­fic-jammed com­muters come home and shut the door...

This brings me to a Swedish study from Umea Uni­ver­si­ty in 2011 that found that cou­ples in which one part­ner com­mutes more than 45 min­utes are 40 per cent more like­ly to suf­fer a di­vorce. The end­less lines of traf­fic lead di­rect­ly to the re­volv­ing doors of di­vorce lawyers and fam­i­ly court. Con­sid­er that women ini­ti­ate 70 per cent of di­vorces, ac­cord­ing to a 2015 study by Michael Rosen­feld, as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of so­ci­ol­o­gy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

Link that fact to re­search by No­bel lau­re­ate Daniel Kah­ne­man and Prince­ton econ­o­mist Al­lan Krueger. In 2006 they asked 900 Tex­an women how much they en­joy com­mon ac­tiv­i­ties. Hav­ing sex came first, so­cial­is­ing sec­ond. Dead last came com­mut­ing. A hap­py wife is not a woman stuck in traf­fic. The ev­i­dence is over­whelm­ing. Traf­fic con­ges­tion af­fects every sin­gle as­pect of our lives neg­a­tive­ly. Us­ing any method to re­duce com­mute time is need­ed and will nec­es­sar­i­ly in­clude mass trans­porta­tion but bi­cy­cle and foot­paths must be a part of that in­vest­ment in a healthy, hap­py, mo­bile so­ci­ety.