Traffic jams everywhere!

Nowadays more and more people use cars to get from one point to another. To my mind, the invention of the car may not have been the greatest invention of the nineteenth century, because of all the other great inventions, but it definitely changed the world.

First of all, cars made people’s lives so much easier, that is, particularly, has changed their way of living. Now they can move to their destination faster and without much effort.

Secondly, the invention of the car has made transportation of things more efficient and flexible. To elaborate, if some years ago people carried their baggage themselves or had to load it on carts and wait for its arrival for a long time, now they don’t have to do that. Instead, they can use cars for a simpler solution.

To conclude, the invention of the car has made people’s lives much easier in certain ways and the world has been changed a lot.

And so while everyone's using cars, Tbilisi has become overloadedwith them and it is particularly impossible to move around.

When moving around Tbilisi, you will notice how many different cars wander around with all kinds of drivers and, while some of them have not even driven a car before, you will find it exhausting and tiring driving in the streets of this city. But, hey, what you are gonna do, you're alone in this big city. Well, technically, not really alone, but still... So, imagine, you just want to go from Vazha-Pshavela to Pekini avenue. First, you have to turn to Kazbegi and then go all the way through Kazbegi and then turn to Pekini. So this whole route is a mess! And it does not even resemble a mess that is in another places, where you find the real traffic jams, in which you can be caught even for hours. People just hate that, I know, but we can't really do anything, can we? I mean, they say that there should be less cars and so it will be good for our environment, of course, and, hence, there won't be so many traffic jams around and one would be able to move around quicker and without getting upset being in traffic jams for hours. But everybody wants cars and everybody buys cars and the mentality is, that, why should you move around the city on foot or by public transport, when you have your own car?! "This is just ridiculous" _ they say. Well, at some point, they are right. But, see, _ at some point! Remember what I wrote about healthy lifestyle? So, when you sit in your car all day, it's that called a healthy lifestyle? I guess not! And what is better than moving around on foot? They say you should walk at least thirty minutes a day, but, trust me, thirty minutes is nothing. If you count, you maybe walk even more, but walking can be different.

Anyways, I saw another traffic jam the other day. It was on Vazha-Pshavela avenue and it was quite surprising as it is a very wide avenue, probably the widest in the whole Tbilisi, and it's really surprising to see so many cars jammed there. And, I can say, it was not just me who looked surprised, but all the people in their cars and on the street walking.

Who can forget those traffic jams that happened all the time in Lilo settlement. That is a place just on the edge of Tbilisi and there is this huge market place, where all the clothes and kitchen stuff and furniture and toys and everything is sold. Some years ago this place was such a mess, you couldn’t even realize what you were doing there. There were so many people, and, once I remember it was just some days until the school year was supposed to start and everybody was there in Lilo to buy some things for their children and stuff like that, and there were people just like they are at concerts or something _ there was no room between them and children could easily faint or get walked on because of that. That could be said about the cars too. There were so many cars outside, that nobody could move even a little bit. So that made a huge traffic jam. And not just this single time! Every time, especially on Saturdays, you should not have driven to Kakheti from Tbilisi or something, especially if it was in the morning until noon, because there was a huge traffic jam and you would have to be stuck in there for hours. And when I say “hours” I mean it!

Once I remember we were going from Tbilisi to Kakheti, and I don’t remember exactly what day it was and now it doesn’t really matter, and it was summer, I guess, or at least it was really hot and we had to stay there on the road without any movement, or just moving a little bit forward, for about 3 hours! Can you imagine that? Nobody liked that section of the road. Everyone hated it. When they thought about it, they imagined hours of being stuck there in a traffic jam, but what could they do? They just hoped, that there wouldn’t be a big traffic jam and that they would get out of there in an hour or so. It’s just been these years that the government has made some good decisions and made that place a lot easier to get by. Those traffic jams are gone now, and while sometimes you can still get stuck in a traffic jam, it's still a small one and nothing to worry about. The place has become “Lilo Mall” and the entrance and parking spots have been renovated and developed and it’s more comfortable to get there and do whatever you want. And the territory is very large.

However, there has appeared a new problem. Well, there was a flood in June in 2015 in Tbilisi. Maybe you have heard of it, when the Tbilisi Zoo was flooded and Mziuri and many other things and the new road that connected Saburtalo to the centre of the city or something, was destroyed and the government just didn’t know what to do with all the cars, because that road was widely used by drivers and there was a lot of traffic, so now that traffic had to go back to the city’s streets and there would be a huge mess and traffic jams and stuff like that. Well, they couldn’t do anything right away, could they? The road was destroyed, there was no way of mysteriously reappearing some kind of a new road, and so that happened what they all anticipated, _ there were traffic jams everywhere! I remember once we wanted to go from Saburtalo to Aghmashenebeli street and we were stuck in a traffic jam for an hour and a half and it was not even June then, it was September or something!

So, many things have not changed since that summer. There still are traffic jams and they are especially on rush hours. Well, people say, there really are not such rush hours now in Tbilisi, as they used to be. I mean, there was a rush hour at noon, for example, and then there was a rush hour in the evening. So those were the times when people went to work, I guess, and in the evenings they went home. So now, it seems like every moment is a rush hour. In the mornings _ there are traffic jams. The traffic jams are even on Nutsubidze Plateau. There are traffic jams in the afternoons on Chavchavadze avenue and in the evenings, too.

Okay, now this is just ridiculous! It is Saturday 12-th of March 2016, I move around the city from 9 a. m. and since then I have been stuck in a number of traffic jams. That is really annoying, everyone will agree. First of all, I went to Ortaschala and the traffic there was okay, as it was morning, and 9 a. m. on Saturday is pretty early in the morning for many people here, so there has not been any problems on the roads. There were not many cars on the embankment of Mtkvari, too. Then I did some things, went in some places, and then it was noon! So, on my way back, I got stuck in some places in traffic jams. There was one on the road near Laguna Vere swimming pool, but it was not that big of a deal. Then the road on Baratashvili Bridge was closed and I had to go on the embankment along the Shardeni street, where there was a small traffic jam because of all these cars going that way. Hence, it took me more time than it was supposed to to get to Isani, where there was another traffic jam and the people were just so annoyed with it, that it was all horns and stuff there.

---

Photo gallery