Traf­fic along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way (CRH) in Ma­coya, which has be­come a night­mare for thou­sands of mo­torists dai­ly, is set to be al­le­vi­at­ed with the con­struc­tion of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar in­ter­change in the area.

The in­ter­change will not be built on the cur­rent site that has been pro­posed but will be de­vel­oped fur­ther east. With this move, there is like­ly to be less ac­qui­si­tion of prop­er­ties to fa­cil­i­tate the con­struc­tion process and there will be less dis­rup­tion. The Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to break ground for the project in late 2022.

This was dis­closed by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his Port-of-Spain of­fice re­cent­ly.

Speak­ing in the com­pa­ny of the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary So­nia Fran­cis-Year­wood and the deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Navin Ram­s­ingh, Sinanan gave an in­sight in­to the project.

He con­firmed three con­cep­tu­al de­signs have al­ready been draft­ed by a con­sul­tant for this in­ter­change.

"So the plan­ning stage of the Ma­coya in­ter­change has start­ed. We are at the stage where we will get the con­cep­tu­al de­signs short­ly and then that will go out for ten­der...So, by the time we fin­ish with the Diego Mar­tin in­ter­change in 2022, we should be in a po­si­tion to award the con­tract and break ground in late 2022 for the Ma­coya in­ter­change."

Last Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is his 2022 bud­get said the Ma­coya in­ter­change will be one of four high­way projects that the Gov­ern­ment will fo­cus on this year to im­prove the coun­try’s road net­work.

Im­bert had al­so said pedes­tri­ans would ben­e­fit from safe cross­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca (Caf) is pro­vid­ing a sec­tor-wide ap­proach pro­gramme loan of US$175 mil­lion for a mod­ernised trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture that is con­sis­tent with the ob­jec­tives of the pipeline projects which the bank is al­ready fi­nanc­ing.

A 2022 pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment pro­gramme doc­u­ment by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment showed in fis­cal 2021, the sum of $736.2 mil­lion was in­vest­ed in roads and bridges through­out the coun­try, as Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to strength­en its in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

Pro­vid­ing de­tails about the project, Sinanan said a fea­si­bil­i­ty study was done in Ma­coya based on the con­ges­tion mo­torists face every day.

This study is tied to the Port-of-Spain traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion project which was de­vel­oped many years ago.

"The fea­si­bil­i­ty study showed that lights from Port-of-Spain to San­gre Grande must be re­moved over a pe­ri­od of time. So the high­way would be­come a free flow," Sinanan said.

Ques­tioned how many peo­ple are like­ly to be re­lo­cat­ed to make way for the in­ter­change, Sinanan said this would de­pend on the de­signs.

"This would be de­ter­mined when a de­sign is fi­nalised. We would have to choose a de­sign with the least amount of dis­rup­tions. On­ly when the pre­lim­i­nary de­signs are com­plet­ed and they do the sur­veys and so, then they will know ex­act­ly which land they will take and which land they would not take."

As to the pre­cise lo­ca­tion of the in­ter­change, Sinanan said it would be done fur­ther east.

"It is go­ing fur­ther east...be­cause if you go in the junc­tion there you will dis­rupt sev­er­al prop­er­ties. It will be built just be­fore the bridge. You know there is a bridge there, a riv­er, it is just some­where around there. You look in terms of if you go fur­ther East, you have less prop­er­ties be­cause you have a lot of State land and things like that.

"It's not like how the Curepe in­ter­change was built smack in the cen­tre there be­cause there was nowhere else to go. Once you go fur­ther East, the op­por­tu­ni­ties are greater for less land ac­qui­si­tion."

Sinanan said the con­struc­tion of the in­ter­change was ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

Hav­ing viewed a three-di­men­sion­al sim­u­la­tion of the pro­posed project, Sinanan said it would, how­ev­er, re­quire far more work and time than the Curepe in­ter­change. He could not give a fi­nal cost for the project at this point.

"This is a big­ger in­ter­change in terms of the amount of lights this will elim­i­nate be­cause when you put in this Ma­coya in­ter­change it takes the lights from UWI all the way up."

Con­struc­tion of the in­ter­change, Sinanan said, would elim­i­nate traf­fic lights at UWI, Pasea and Ma­coya in­ter­sec­tions which would help re­duce gas emis­sions, con­ges­tion and time spent on the roads

He as­sured that the pro­posed in­ter­change will not dis­rupt op­er­a­tions of the Nor­ris De­onar­ine Whole­sale Mar­ket which is a known land­mark at the bustling in­ter­sec­tion.

"What I can tell you, no...It will not in­ter­fere. It will make ac­cess much eas­i­er for that."

So far, Sinanan said a con­sul­tant has come up with three con­cep­tu­al de­signs for the in­ter­change which a tech­ni­cal team at his min­istry would have to re­view.

They would then se­lect the most ap­pro­pri­ate de­sign, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the fac­tors of cost, min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to busi­ness­es and home­own­ers, the best lo­ca­tion and land need­ed.

The de­sign se­lect­ed will then go out for com­pet­i­tive ten­der.

Sinanan said who­ev­er wins the "de­sign-build con­tract" would have to come up with the fi­nal de­sign of the in­ter­change.

"So we will have a con­cep­tu­al de­sign that they (con­trac­tor) will ten­der on. Then they will fine-tune that when they do the fi­nal de­sign."

Among the scope of works to be un­der­tak­en, Sinanan said, would be the con­struc­tion of feed­er roads, clover­leaf sec­tions and widen­ing of the high­way.

"We are at the stage where we have to get the statu­to­ry doc­u­ments in or­der...mean­ing that we have to go to places like the EMA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty).

Build­ing the in­ter­change on this new lo­ca­tion can have one in­con­ve­nience for Ma­coya res­i­dents who live on the north­ern side of the high­way, as they will have to first pro­ceed east and then west on­to the in­ter­change which would take be­tween one or two min­utes of dri­ving time.

As the min­istry gets set to un­der­take this ma­jor project, Sinanan said they are al­so plan­ning to con­struct two ad­di­tion­al in­ter­changes at Trinci­ty and Pi­ar­co in­ter­sec­tions lat­er on. Of these in­ter­changes, Sinanan said, Pi­ar­co would re­quire a larg­er scope of works.

"When we are done with these two in­ter­changes we would on­ly have the lights at O'Meara and Tumpuna to deal with. So it would be smooth sail­ing from Port-of-Spain to Ari­ma with­out hav­ing to stop at a traf­fic light."

A study by the min­istry found that close to 60,000 mo­torists use the 39 kilo­me­tre-long high­way dai­ly.