Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association, 27 March 2025 – Progress, challenges, and the (gridlocked) road ahead.
We stand at the crossroads of progress, where modernisation and economic growth bring both immense benefits and unavoidable challenges.
As a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) we have a thriving tourism industry, a growing urban population responding to economic growth, increasing foreign investments and expanding industrial growth as part of efforts to diversify the economy from its heavy reliance on tourism.
However, we generally blame everyone but ourselves for the uncomfortable elements that emerge from stepping out of third world country dependency on hand-outs, and into a developing country dipping its toes into the good, the bad, and the downright ugly sides of moving into middle to higher income status that come naturally on the tails of economic progress.
Progress comes with undeniable negative trade-offs, unfortunately: rising costs and pressure on infrastructure might be the more obvious ones. Less obvious are societal challenges from exposure to increased revenue streams, which are further subsidised by remittances and which require financial literacy, educational focus and moral navigation for the excesses that we are now exposed to, which eat away at the traditional and cultural support systems that usually cushioned and protected us.
When accessibility to affordable housing options is inadequate, we force our workers to move farther and farther away from their workplaces. This results in longer commutes to work and school as part of our everyday lives. This reduces critical time for family, homework, meal preparation, exercise or sports, and religious or cultural activities.
Less time for family, rest and a natural increase in stress levels consequently.
Affordable housing options disappear for many reasons. These include failing to plan for towns to grow, for cities to expand out of their boundaries, or where existing suburbs quickly outgrow their original footprints.
It is also a failure to recognise the direction that the country was moving in.
When we fail to recognise the more obvious signs of squatter settlements mushrooming around us that exert pressure on waste, water and power services but complain about the more obvious signs of our roads flooding or water failing to come out of our taps as expected, we ignore the obvious signs of increasing demand.
Demand for more schools so our children don’t travel too far to sit in classes with 40 to 50 children in a class. We ignore the demand for more affordable housing options to address the increasing settlements that do not allow the social structures that support families to be safe and healthy, and we ignore the demand for access to better health care services to address the growing incidents of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
However, the most obvious of all these often subtle signs of the negative impacts of increasing economic progress that builds up over a decade or more without much attention is traffic congestion.
Until we’re sitting in traffic for longer and longer periods, that is.
As we push people out further, they must travel longer distances.
When we shut the door on the bus industry’s ability to make a profit that would allow better bus services and open the door instead to mini vans and taxis, while being unable to monitor the number of illegal operations in both these services; we limit the opportunity to provide the public with what could be a more reliable, safer and cheaper public transport option – that done efficiently, would also reduce the need to have so many vehicles on our roads.
So, the recent efforts by the Land Transport Authorities (LTA) to trial measures aimed at easing traffic in Suva highlight an important reality: as our economy grows, so too do the complexities of managing its side effects.
And while it is wonderful that we appear to have finally woken up to this challenge, no doubt from the many hours and millions of dollars in lost productivity, the cost to families and the economy of lost lives and tragic accidents on our roads – we are also hoping that longer term solutions are part of the challenge consideration.
The type of traffic lights and speed cameras we select must be improved to ensure they replace the current types that work intermittently, go off during heavy downpours or are connected to power lines that cannot take intermittent power outages or surges.
If a roundabout is preferred over traffic lights at busy intersections, we need better signages to remind drivers about the “right hand rule”, which lanes to select to move left or right, and where left lane traffic must turn left, etc.
Where a busy intersection has no lights, we could either add a small roundabout or new traffic lights – most drivers in Fiji do not practice courtesy or understand the “zipper merging” rule for traffic management.
Better education and awareness on safe driving rules would help as well. And we don’t mean through the printed paper fliers that get handed to drivers that are forced to stop to accept them from police or LTA officers, which just adds to roadside rubbish.
Traffic congestions add 2 hours to the daily work and school commute in the mornings for people travelling within the Suva-Nausori corridor and close to that time for Lami to Suva travellers on their single-lane road into the city when there is an accident – which is frequent.
For workers in tourism coming in from Ba and Lautoka into Nadi, or from Sigatoka into Nadi from the other direction, this means you’re on the road before 5am to catch your transport.
If you’re a shift worker, there are no public transportation options available after normal office hours or access to the more remote regions, so tourism operators and suppliers provide transport that they spend between $50,000 to $450,000 annually on.
For the Western workers, there are additional challenges to simply being stuck in traffic that were supposed to have been addressed with the double lane roads running in both directions from the airport.
Unfortunately, once the road hits Nadi, this flood-prone town with its outdated single lane road system spiked by a network of back-alley streets snaking across the entire town with a traffic light system that is not waterproof is where the town planners simply lost the plot.
The single lane in and out of this riverside town that acts as our gateway to the international airport is gridlocked every morning and every afternoon. If you’re catching a flight out at 8am, you must be picked up from Deuba to the Coral Coast from 3am so that you’re past that single-lane bridge into town well before the 7am traffic starts.
There are no alternative routes if the town is flooded, and while there was a plan to address this some years ago, no one explained why it was eventually abandoned.
There was also much talk about using the already existent railway lines to introduce a passenger train system. We do not doubt that our visitors and tourism workers would be thrilled to hop on a train to get to and from work.
Fiji is not alone in facing these growing pains.
Many developed nations have successfully mitigated traffic congestion through forward-thinking policies. Singapore, for example, introduced electronic road pricing to manage congestion, while cities like London have implemented congestion charges.
Other solutions include dedicated bus lanes, carpool incentives, and investments in public transportation systems. An excellent example of a government-subsidised bus transport system is in Brisbane, where to encourage commuters to ditch their cars and ride a bus into work or school in the city– the bus fare is only 50 cents!
Some of these measures may be difficult to implement in Fiji due to infrastructure limitations and economic constraints, but one crucial takeaway is that planning is critical.
As we drive more investments and development into growing our export markets and widening our agricultural and technology offerings, commercial, industrial and tourism hubs will continue to evolve. Planners must be aware of where these will take place and plan for schools, housing subdivisions and health services, and inevitably how these connect with existing or improved road systems.
Instead of waiting for congestion to worsen and looking for short-term solutions, why not begin planning for improved public transport and ways to reduce cars on the roads?
Instead of reacting to overcrowded housing issues, why not introduce policies that encourage affordable housing developments closer to employment hubs?
Instead of dealing with environmental damage after the fact, why not enforce stricter sustainability measures now? We could start by not forcing those safe-driving pamphlets on drivers, which they never read.
Modernisation is not something to be feared. It is an inevitable and necessary part of Fiji’s growth.
However, we must approach it with balance—embracing the benefits while actively planning for its impacts that are both positive and negative and being prepared to better address the challenges.
After all, if Fiji is to thrive in the modern world, we must be prepared to welcome progress and shape the direction we want it to go in.
Fantasha Lockington – CEO, FHTA (Published in the Fiji Times on 27 March 2025)
Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association
The Voice of the Industry
