Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Mo­torists trav­el­ling along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way may breathe a sigh of re­lief in the next four months as the min­istry of works and trans­port is work­ing to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic on the pas­sage­way, start­ing with the widen­ing of both the south bound and north bound lanes from two to three.

These works have be­gun in the cen­tral area, which is of­ten hard hit by ve­hic­u­lar con­ges­tion.

The project, which con­sists of two pack­ages, will cost tax­pay­ers $65 mil­lion.

Con­struc­tion on the first pack­age is be­ing done by Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed from the bridge in Ch­agua­nas to En­deav­our near Star­bucks.

The sec­ond pack­age by Seereer­am Bros Ltd will con­tin­ue on­wards, up to Chase Vil­lage. This project is al­so ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue un­til San Fer­nan­do though a time­line for that was not pro­vid­ed.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a tour of the con­struc­tion site, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said though the project is cost­ing mil­lions, it will save the gov­ern­ment mon­ey in the long run.

“The ben­e­fit of this in terms of time sav­ing, ac­tu­al­ly widen­ing up and the amount of mon­ey that we save from the main­te­nance of the veg­e­ta­tion and ca­ble bar­ri­ers, in the long term it is some­thing that will pay off for it­self. We can’t build our­selves out of traf­fic jams. We can’t con­tin­ue to build more high­ways and more roads but there are cer­tain things that we could im­prove on the ex­ist­ing net­work and this is one of that,” he said.

While work is in progress, Sinanan urged mo­torists to ob­serve the law and ad­here to the no­tices in place as he not­ed that con­struc­tion will com­mence from 9 pm to 4 am on the road­way, while off-road works will con­tin­ue from 9 am to 3 pm dur­ing peak hours. The min­is­ter added that po­lice of­fi­cers are man­ag­ing the traf­fic, al­low­ing use of the shoul­der.

Mean­while, he could not say how much time the widen­ing of the lanes would save in­di­vid­u­als tra­vers­ing the high­way, but Sinanan ex­pressed that it would be ex­treme­ly help­ful.

“These are in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ments and I am sure if you could save 10-15 min­utes on one leg, that is sig­nif­i­cant be­cause it’s both lanes. The prob­lem with traf­fic here is that on a morn­ing peo­ple have to leave San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin, very ear­ly to get in­to Port-of-Spain and then sim­i­lar­ly on an evening, the traf­fic to get back and most of us who don’t live in San Fer­nan­do, we don’t ap­pre­ci­ate the amount of time that is wast­ed in traf­fic in Trinidad,” he said.

The min­is­ter fur­ther de­fend­ed the project, which he said was crit­i­cised by some mem­bers of the pub­lic who sel­dom vis­it San Fer­nan­do.

“I have heard com­ments from peo­ple say­ing ‘well no, we don’t need to do this, let’s fix the road up here.’ It’s the ones who utilise the roads and who are trapped in the traf­fic every day, they are the ones who feel it,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Sinanan, peo­ple leav­ing the cap­i­tal to get on­to the Grand Bazaar In­ter­change en­counter traf­fic from El So­cor­ro. He said this is be­cause the lanes re­duce from four, to three then two cre­at­ing a bot­tle­neck.

“Once you pass Ch­agua­nas, the traf­fic starts to flow be­cause you have to fil­ter in. So, if you look at the over­all tim­ing, when you reach to, maybe clos­er to San Fer­nan­do, you’ll see a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment,” Sinanan said in ref­er­ence to the on­go­ing work.

With this new project, ca­ble bar­ri­ers will be phased out as it was said to be too ex­pen­sive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate for high­ways.

To pre­vent cars from cross­ing the me­di­an, the gov­ern­ment will in­vest in New Jer­sey bar­ri­ers which can be found on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

It is con­crete with a unique slope that pre­vents ve­hi­cles from be­ing thrown out of their lanes in pos­si­ble traf­fic ac­ci­dents. The main­te­nance fee is low and it is said to be safer than the ca­ble bar­ri­ers.

“It is very, very ex­pen­sive and it seems not to be work­ing for us be­cause ca­ble bar­ri­ers, once you touch the ca­ble bar­ri­er it drops for about 100 or 200 me­tres and you find that hap­pen­ing all the time and that is why it’s dif­fi­cult for us to main­tain it. I re­mem­ber com­ing in­to of­fice and there was a bill for re­pairs for ca­ble bar­ri­ers for about $20 mil­lion dol­lars, just for re­pairs out­stand­ing,” Sinanan said.

The min­istry is em­bark­ing on 11 traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion projects this year and sev­er­al ar­eas stand to ben­e­fit in­clud­ing Ch­agua­nas, Mar­aval, San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do.