KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Speed lim­it ad­just­ments have been made across sev­er­al busy road­ways, ramps and in­ter­sec­tions.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said yes­ter­day that mo­torists us­ing the Curepe In­ter­change from the Val­sayn Branch Road to the South­ern Main Road will now have to abide by a 30-kilo­me­tre speed lim­it.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, how­ev­er, the min­is­ter said some dri­vers may be pleased to hear that the speed lim­it has in­creased from 50 kilo­me­tres to 65 kilo­me­tres along oth­er roads, in­clud­ing parts of the La­dy Young Road, West­ern Main Road from Mu­cu­rapo Road to the in­ter­sec­tion of the West­ern Main Road and West­land Av­enue, as well as the South Trunk Road from the Cross Cross­ing In­ter­change to Dum­fries Road in San Fer­nan­do.

The min­is­ter as­sured the pub­lic that the de­ci­sion to ad­just the speed lim­its, im­ple­ment­ed yes­ter­day, was not made ar­bi­trar­i­ly but based on sur­veys com­plet­ed by his min­istry.

“In all these cas­es, the roads would have been up­grad­ed, ei­ther widened, shoul­ders im­proved and sev­er­al as­pects of the en­gi­neer­ing would have gone in­to it. So, it is not some­thing that the min­is­ter say, ‘Well the peo­ple are call­ing for it, so let’s do it’. You do the sur­veys, the stud­ies, you look at the en­gi­neer­ing up­grades on the roads over time and then you con­sid­er in­creas­ing the speed lim­it be­cause we do have a big con­cern about speed on the road and it is some­thing that we have to man­age,” he said.

He added that the TTPS is al­so aware of the changes and signs have been put up to no­ti­fy dri­vers.

He added that mo­torists who were al­ready abid­ing by the speed lim­its should have noth­ing to be wor­ried about.

“You wouldn’t get charged for dri­ving slow. So if you were with­in the speed lim­it be­fore, I don’t think you have a prob­lem be­cause the speed lim­its are not re­duced. They are ac­tu­al­ly in­creased,” Sinanan said.

He ac­knowl­edged that there is al­ways con­cern when the speed lim­it ris­es, but said it is nec­es­sary to do so from time to time to main­tain the flow of traf­fic.

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive Sharon In­gle­field does not agree with in­creas­ing speed lim­its along any of the na­tion’s roads.

In­gle­field said the roads are in poor con­di­tion and there has been an in­crease in col­li­sions.

“Un­til we see more se­ri­ous em­pha­sis be­ing pro­vid­ed by dri­vers on sim­ple things like wear­ing seat­belts, obey­ing traf­fic sig­nals, obey­ing speed lim­its as they ex­ist now and there­fore se­ri­ous col­li­sions, in­juries and fa­tal­i­ties de­creas­ing, we do not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with in­creas­ing speed lim­its on the is­land.

“All over the world, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards are de­creas­ing speed lim­its es­pe­cial­ly where you have high pedes­tri­an traf­fic like on the Mu­cu­rapo Road and there­fore, we would pre­fer to see that speed lim­its were main­tained at no greater than 50 km per hour on those par­tic­u­lar main roads,” In­gle­field said.