KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Widen­ing of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Cou­va, ac­qui­si­tion of 300 new bus­es and fi­nal­i­sa­tion of a new Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan, are among the projects the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) will be un­der­tak­ing in fis­cal 2024.

These were among the plans out­lined by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan when he took part in the Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day. He said it was not an elec­tion bud­get but one that would take T&T for­ward.

Sinanan said the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture had aged and rapid growth re­sult­ed in con­gest­ed high­ways and long com­mute times. Mean­while, cli­mate change posed new chal­lenges, in­clud­ing a strain on drainage and road in­fra­struc­ture.

He told the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that Chi­na, Puer­to Ri­co and Hawaii had all felt the wrath of dras­tic changes in weath­er pat­terns, while Aus­tralia and Cana­da bat­tled wild­fires that dec­i­mat­ed for­est re­serves, homes and com­mu­ni­ties. He re­called the se­vere flood­ing in Brook­lyn, New York, when there was a month’s vol­ume of rain­fall in three hours and com­pared it to the heavy flood­ing in south­ern com­mu­ni­ties last Ju­ly, not­ing that the wa­ter re­ced­ed in 30 min­utes be­cause of work done by the MOWT.

Sinanan said T&T’s last com­pre­hen­sive trans­porta­tion plan was done in 1967 and while there had been a few ad­just­ments over the years, there is need for a new plan be­cause of ex­pan­sive de­vel­op­ment through­out the coun­try.

He said the MOWT will ap­proach it on a phased ba­sis by first de­vel­op­ing a Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Pol­i­cy. Gov­ern­ment has part­nered with the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to be­gin draft­ing the pol­i­cy, and a con­sul­tant was re­tained in Ju­ly.

The pol­i­cy will ad­dress the unique as­pects of land, sea and air trans­porta­tion net­works, pre­pare strate­gic guide­lines, cre­ate a pre­cise road map cov­er­ing the next five years and pri­ori­tise projects, among oth­er pur­pos­es, he said.

In the mean­time, the MOWT has adopt­ed a three-pronged ap­proach to land in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing the con­tin­ued build­ing of the ma­jor high­way net­work, up­grade of all ma­jor and sec­ondary roads and traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion ini­tia­tives.

Sinanan said the MOWT wants to up­grade all roads in the coun­try but can’t do it all to­geth­er.

To date the MOWT de­liv­ered on the first phase of the Va­len­cia to To­co High­way and will con­tin­ue the up­grades to Matelot. Ex­ten­sion of the Churchill Ro­sevelt High­way to San­gre Grande will con­tin­ue and should be com­plet­ed by the end of March 2024.

“This Gov­ern­ment does not just look at con­stituen­cies where we have our sup­port. This project is in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, ex­tend­ing all the way to Ma­yaro, so this Gov­ern­ment looks at the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Sinanan said the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin is a project T&T should feel proud about as it was the last on the 1967 Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan. Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to build it in 2008, but there were starts and stops. Gov­ern­ment ten­dered the project in 2010, and de­spite a regime change, con­struc­tion be­gan in 2011, with sev­er­al prob­lems over the years.

“I am very hap­py that this Sat­ur­day a sig­nif­i­cant part of that high­way will be com­mis­sioned and you will be able to dri­ve from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin with­in 20 min­utes - some­thing that took an hour and a half if there were no ac­ci­dents or any­thing on the road,” he said.

Sinanan de­scribed the high­way as a great achieve­ment of the Gov­ern­ment and said while oth­ers would try to take cred­it, that con­struc­ton project had been a night­mare be­tween 2010 and 2015 which could have cost the coun­try bil­lions more.

He said the Diego Mar­tin In­ter­change Project should be open by No­vem­ber and up­grades to the Man­zanil­la Road will con­tin­ue with widen­ing of the road and bring­ing it up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Sinanan said the High­ways Di­vi­sion, Bridges, Land­slip and Traf­fic Man­age­ment Unit and Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) un­der­took more than 600 projects of road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion, traf­fic man­age­ment, bridge con­struc­tion, milling and paving, road­way strength­en­ing, re­con­struc­tion of col­lapse cross­ing, bridge re­pairs, side­walks and man­hole cov­er re­pairs this year.