Richard Lord

For­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the pro­pos­al to open up the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to all mo­torists dur­ing cer­tain hours won't work. Im­bert made the state­ment dur­ing a news brief­ing fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's cer­e­mo­ny at which Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards pre­sent­ed the new Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley with his In­stru­ments of Ap­point­ment at the Knowsley Build­ing , Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er had said 24 hours ear­li­er that the pro­pos­al is to be con­sid­ered for im­ple­men­ta­tion to re­duce traf­fic con­ges­tion on the na­tion's roads. "I don't think it's prac­ti­cal. I think it will clog up the bus route,"he added. He said the plan may re­sult in bumper to bumper traf­fic on the route. "I think that the maxi taxi dri­vers will soon un­der­stand that it is not a good idea," Im­bert said.

He said the PBR was de­signed to al­low mass tran­sit ve­hi­cles to be re­moved from the East­ern Main Road and to al­low for emer­gency ve­hi­cles to use it. "So that if you have these thou­sands of ve­hi­cles on the bus route, it will de­feat the en­tire pur­pose of the bus route and the maxi taxi dri­vers them­selves will have a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty. "They will dis­cov­er that in due course," Im­bert told re­porters. Warn­er said dur­ing yes­ter­day's post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair that de­tails of the plan are to be worked out be­fore be­ing tak­en to Cab­i­net for ap­proval.