The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port plans to con­struct an in­ter­change at Ma­coya which will be more elab­o­rate than the $221 mil­lion Curepe In­ter­change.

De­tails of the pro­posed in­ter­change were laid out by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and the min­istry's chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer Navin Ram­s­ingh dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the min­istry's Port-of-Spain of­fice.

"We are at the point where we are go­ing to Cab­i­net with the pre­lim­i­nary de­signs for the Ma­coya In­ter­change. The time­line for that is to have a con­tract award­ed at the lat­ter part of 2021," Sinanan said. The con­tract, he said, will be award­ed through com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing.

Sinanan said he hoped that the "same prices we (min­istry) had got­ten for the Curepe In­ter­change" would be main­tained for the Ma­coya In­ter­change.

"Not nec­es­sar­i­ly (at) the same cost of the Curepe in­ter­change. We are hop­ing to use that same lev­el of cost in the de­sign for the Ma­coya In­ter­change. If we could ac­com­plish that, then it would be a sig­nif­i­cant sav­ing for us be­cause the Ma­coya In­ter­sec­tion is far more elab­o­rate than the Curepe In­ter­change be­cause of the way it is lo­cat­ed and the num­ber of feed­er roads you have to put in..."

Un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, the Curepe In­ter­change was pro­ject­ed to cost tax­pay­ers over $500 mil­lion. How­ev­er, when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice in 2015 the project was re-ten­dered. In 2017, Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd won the con­tract for the $221.7 mil­lion in­ter­change project which was opened in June.

Ram­s­ingh said the min­istry hired a firm to un­der­take a traf­fic study for the new in­ter­change. The firm al­so came up with a con­cep­tu­al de­sign which will soon be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for ap­proval.

Once ap­proval is giv­en, Ram­s­ingh said, a con­trac­tor will be­gin work. The project is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered be­fore the first quar­ter of 2023.

"So ba­si­cal­ly, what we have done is that we have got­ten Cab­i­net's ap­proval for the re­moval of all the sig­nalised in­ter­sec­tions up to Or­ange Grove Road. The next step is to seek Cab­i­net's ap­proval to pro­ceed ini­tial­ly with the Ma­coya In­ter­change be­cause as every­one is aware the traf­fic right now builds up at Val­sayn South. So when we build this in­ter­change you will have ab­solute­ly no traf­fic un­til you reach Trinci­ty In­ter­sec­tion."

Ram­s­ingh said a pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty study un­der­tak­en by lo­cal con­sul­tants "Besson" showed that the Ma­coya In­ter­change will re­duce gas emis­sions, trav­el time, and bot­tle­necks for dri­vers. When the project comes on stream it will al­so pro­vide jobs for over 200 work­ers and stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

"The study we do is to try and come up with the most eco­nom­ic so­lu­tion for the prob­lem we have. The prob­lem we have is re­al­ly the con­ges­tion caused by the traf­fic lights be­cause the vol­ume of traf­fic is so high and the de­lays by the lights are so long."

The study al­so iden­ti­fied the best lo­ca­tion for the in­ter­change.

Ram­s­ingh said in ex­cess of 57,000 mo­torists use the 39 kilo­me­tres-long Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way (CRH) dai­ly.

He said the in­stal­la­tion of traf­fic lights along the CRH was just a tem­po­rary mea­sure.

Con­struc­tion of the Ma­coya In­ter­change, Ram­s­ingh said, will see the re­moval of the UWI, Pasea and Ma­coya traf­fic lights to en­sure a smooth flow of ve­hi­cles.

He said three pedes­tri­an walkovers will al­so be built–at UWI, Tu­na­puna, and Ma­coya for com­mu­ni­ties.

"As we go fur­ther east, the plan has al­ways been that we are not go­ing to in­ter­fere with com­mu­ni­ties. We are go­ing to min­imise the im­pact. So we shall have no so­cial im­pact on the peo­ple. We have iden­ti­fied one prop­er­ty that will be re­quired on the north side. The south side is state lands."

The min­istry will host pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions with busi­ness­es, mo­torists, and res­i­dents to gauge their feed­back once Cab­i­net gives the green light for the project.

"When the in­ter­change is built peo­ple who live on the north side will have to go east to the in­ter­change in or­der to pro­ceed West. So there would be a lit­tle of an out-of-way trav­el. In terms of the tim­ing, it is just about one or two min­utes," Ram­s­ingh said.

Sinanan said they plan to re­move all the traf­fic lights from Port-of-Spain to San­gre Grande to ease the frus­trat­ing bot­tle­necks.

He said there are plans to con­struct an in­ter­change in Mal­oney as well as Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma, for ve­hi­cles to pro­ceed to San­gre Grande with­out any hin­drance.

Sinanan said once work on the Ma­coya In­ter­change reach­es a cer­tain stage they will be­gin pre­lim­i­nary work on the third in­ter­change at Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua, and then move on to the fourth at the Trinci­ty in­ter­sec­tion.

"Again, it would all de­pend on the fund­ing that is avail­able. If we could com­plete two in­ter­changes with­in this five-year term and prob­a­bly start the third one, we would make back up for the time lost be­tween 2010 and 2015," the min­is­ter said.

Asked if the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will af­fect the de­liv­ery date of this project, Sinanan said in the last nine month sev­er­al of the min­istry's de­vel­op­men­tal projects had slowed down due to clo­sure of our bor­ders and health pro­to­cols.

"There is a slow­down in the world econ­o­my which af­fects us here. When you have a slow­down...you know, there is no big de­mand. So there are some ad­van­tages there. But there are al­so some dis­ad­van­tages in oth­er ar­eas."