One of the ma­jor projects on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s 2025 agen­da is a con­nec­tor road from East to South Trinidad.

Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing Mon­day’s of­fi­cial com­mis­sion­ing of Bridge B1/11 along the Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare Road.

“So that if you are com­ing from any­where in the East from Trinci­ty, all the way to Ma­yaro, rather than some time you have to go down to the Grand Bazaar In­ter­change to go south, we are look­ing at a con­nec­tor road from just around Trinci­ty that takes you all the way to the high­way,” he said.

The min­is­ter said this road would ease traf­fic even for south mo­torists/com­muters try­ing to get to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He said the road will con­nect at Trinci­ty and take ve­hi­cles to the in­ter­change at the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary.

“You see there is a bot­tle­neck now at Grand Bazaar if every­body go­ing to East, some­times if you go­ing to the North you have to come down to Grand Bazaar what we’re try­ing to do is to spread the traf­fic around,” he said.

Sinanan told the me­dia that the project would be done on a phased ba­sis but ex­plained that a lot of the work had al­ready been com­plet­ed.

He said they have some work to start from scratch (Green­field) but a lot of it has al­ready been done, such as the widen­ing of the road at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice (Ca­roni). Sinanan said once this is com­plet­ed, they will start to con­nect to the ex­ist­ing net­work.

For 2024, he said his min­istry be­gan work on or com­plet­ed 60-65 bridges.

“Some of the bridges we have in Trinidad are over 100 years old and there are sev­er­al chal­lenges. One is the state of the bridge and the oth­er ma­jor con­cern we have is the ca­pac­i­ty of the bridge ... the idea is to en­sure that all the bridges in Trinidad in a phased ba­sis will be tak­en care of,” he stat­ed.

“There is a pro­gramme to erad­i­cate all the wood­en bridges, we still have a cou­ple of them, es­pe­cial­ly on the North Coast ... with­in now and next week we have six bridges to open,” he added.

The Bridge B1/11 along the Ma­yaro Guayagua­yare Road was the lat­est one and the min­is­ter said the project cost $7.8 mil­lion and was com­plet­ed in eight months. Gen­er­al Earth Movers was the con­trac­tor and Sinanan said they de­liv­ered the bridge with­in the time and bud­get.

The min­is­ter said the bridge helps in im­prov­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for both res­i­dents and vis­i­tors to the rur­al area.