Loyse Vin­cent

Bus dri­ver and Trans­port & In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go Ted Tay­lor is call­ing on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to fix Turpin Bend, Char­lot­teville, ur­gent­ly.

Over the years, the bend—a dou­ble u-turn with a steep de­cline—de­scend­ing in­to the vil­lage of Char­lot­teville, has been a cause of con­cern for many mo­torists, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with larg­er ve­hi­cles.

This is­sue is back on the front burn­er af­ter a wide­ly-shared video showed a Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) bus dri­ver hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty nav­i­gat­ing the turn, ear­li­er this month.

“For years now we have been ask­ing for the au­thor­i­ties to do some­thing about that piece of road. The on­ly feed­back we got is 'We don’t have any mon­ey'.”

In 2016, To­ba­go To­day con­tact­ed the then sec­re­tary for In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Gary Melville, who said: “The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is cog­nisant of the chal­lenges cre­at­ed by the two hair­pin bends which lead to Char­lot­teville."

He said the THA was "in dis­cus­sions with prop­er­ty own­ers in the area to have an al­ter­na­tive route cre­at­ed".

He al­so said when those talks end­ed, the THA would have con­sult­ed the vil­lage coun­cil and res­i­dents on the way for­ward.

How­ev­er, to date, lit­tle has been done.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion, In­fra­struc­ture Sec­re­tary Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes said the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil was cur­rent­ly await­ing fund­ing to ad­dress the prob­lem, "which will take a two-step ap­proach".

"We have to first con­duct ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­veys on the area to test the sta­bil­i­ty of the land and the favoura­bil­i­ty of just putting up a wall be­cause pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies have shown that the area may need a 32-foot wall.”

Des Vi­gnes said while he un­der­stands that the prob­lem has been long­stand­ing, steps will be tak­en to en­sure that the project is done cor­rect­ly, and Ude­cott has been en­gaged to look at the is­sue. He not­ed that parts of the road have been widened as an in­ter­im mea­sure.

In 2015, nine peo­ple were in­jured af­ter the 12-seater minibus in which they were trav­el­ling ca­reened off the road and end­ed up perched on a precipice.

In 2012, the bend was the site of an­oth­er ac­ci­dent as 23 peo­ple—17 sol­diers, two sailors, and four civil­ians—were in­jured, as their dri­ver lost con­trol as he tried to nav­i­gate the bend.

And in 2010 Char­maine Fontaine, her daugh­ter Rhe­sa, and a male pas­sen­ger died, while an 18-month-old ba­by crit­i­cal­ly in­jured when the dri­ver ran off the road.