Both the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS are adamant there was no need to open the north­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way (UBH) on Tues­day to ease con­ges­tion caused by traf­fic grid­lock.

Thou­sands of com­muters head­ing to east, cen­tral and south Trinidad didn’t get to their homes un­til three to as much as five hours af­ter leav­ing their des­ti­na­tions.

The sit­u­a­tion was cre­at­ed af­ter po­lice were forced to close off one of the three lanes on the UBH af­ter wa­ter from the flood-rav­aged Ca­roni plains set­tled on the road­way just af­ter the fly­over near the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, mak­ing dri­ving through it dan­ger­ous for mo­torists.

The grid­lock set so­cial me­dia abuzz.

“South peo­ple who work­ing town reach­ing home mid­night to leave quar­ter past mid­night to go back to work to­mor­row,” lo­cal co­me­di­an Kwame Weekes tweet­ed.

“A dri­ve that usu­al­ly takes 23 mins, just took me three hours and 45 mins,” said ra­dio pre­sen­ter Vir­mala Balka­ran on her Face­book page.

“PoS to Ch­agua­nas was a night­mare. God be with all of you who are still stuck in that traf­fic.”

Two lanes of traf­fic even­tu­al­ly turned in­to one as the wa­ter rose and the traf­fic con­tin­ued well in­to the night and in­to the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing. Two ques­tions were asked wide­ly on so­cial me­dia:

Why didn’t the au­thor­i­ties open the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to ease east­bound traf­fic? And why didn’t they di­vert traf­fic on­to part of the north­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way?

At the 5 pm joint min­is­te­r­i­al press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, it was an­nounced that the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route would be opened at 6 pm.

“The rea­son why we have to use the time is 6, be­cause we have to make sure the mass trans­porta­tion that us­es the Bus Route is al­lowed to leave Port-of-Spain,” Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said.

But on the prospect of open­ing the UBH north­bound lane, Sinanan not­ed, “The po­lice are on site. If the po­lice de­cide they want to open a lane on the op­po­site side, then we will fa­cil­i­tate that but the last in­for­ma­tion I had was that the wa­ter is re­ced­ing and if that hap­pens then there’s no need for that.”

Giv­en what oc­curred, Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to de­ter­mine who makes the call and ex­act­ly what it would take to di­vert traf­fic on­to the op­po­site lane.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Symon De No­bri­ga, said “The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port would be re­spon­si­ble for de­ci­sions re­gard­ing al­ter­na­tive traf­fic routes when these sit­u­a­tions arise.”

That de­ci­sion, he said, is made in con­junc­tion with the TTPS traf­fic branch.

The TTPS’ of­fi­cial po­si­tion mean­while, was that there was no need to di­vert the traf­fic at the time.

“The sit­u­a­tion was as­sessed ear­li­er on by the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol com­mand and one of the un­der­pin­ning fac­tors was that the left lane of the three-lane car­riage­way, which had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 inch­es of wa­ter or less, was pass­able by both light ve­hi­cles and cars,” the TTPS said in a state­ment.

“Cars would dri­ve through deep­er wa­ters when Port- of-Spain is flood­ed. High­way car­riage­way di­ver­sions are con­sid­ered usu­al­ly when at least two lanes are com­pro­mised, which did not oc­cur yes­ter­day (Tues­day).”

The TTPS said there were mul­ti­ple fac­tors which caused the traf­fic, in­clud­ing the flood­ing on the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, which serves as an al­ter­nate route for dri­vers, forc­ing dri­vers to ac­cess the South­ern Main Road from the low­er parts of the high­way. The TTPS added that there was a high vol­ume of large heavy goods ve­hi­cles at Wright­son Road, flood­ing at South Quay, a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent on the east­bound lane of the Beetham High­way and lat­er that evening, and then a fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dent along the south­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way near the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Ground, which caused ob­struc­tion on both the north and south­bound lanes.

Fol­low­ing ma­jor floods on Oc­to­ber 19, 2018, the event that caused the un­prece­dent­ed Green­vale flood­ing, the south­bound lane was com­plete­ly flood­ed and the Min­istry of Works al­lowed ve­hi­cles and trucks to di­vert to the north­bound lane, which was al­so flood­ed, un­til Munroe Road.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who was com­mis­sion­er at that time, said he was able to use the space in the high­way to di­vert cars on­to the road.

He said he co­or­di­nat­ed with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, get­ting sup­port from them to pro­vide cones and lights while us­ing the po­lice to di­rect and guide traf­fic then.

“That al­lowed the traf­fic to flow; ba­si­cal­ly com­mon sense. Think­ing out of the box,” Grif­fith said.