Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar is plan­ning to tack­le traf­fic con­ges­tion head-on by build­ing a six-storey car park and vend­ing fa­cil­i­ty in 2011. Speak­ing with re­porters at the Di­vali Na­gar site in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Nages­sar said the new traf­fic arrange­ments, which were im­ple­ment­ed be­fore Christ­mas Day, worked well in al­le­vi­at­ing traf­fic at the En­deav­our Fly­over. Be­fore the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new plan, traf­fic of­ten backed up on­to the Uri­ah But­ler High­way, caus­ing dis­tress to mo­torists, Nages­sar said. "When I came through the En­deav­our Fly­over this morn­ing, I thought that it was a cur­few be­cause every­thing was clear," he said.

"The traf­fic plan was suc­cess­ful...we had a few hic­cups. At the gas sta­tion there was too much traf­fic turn­ing here. We need to have a round­about at the gas sta­tion." Say­ing the traf­fic plan was a fan­tas­tic idea, the may­or ad­mit­ted: "There is still room for im­prove­ment with re­gards to traf­fic on the Mon­trose and Ch­agua­nas Main Roads. "I am cer­tain with the co-op­er­a­tion of the Min­istry of Works, Traf­fic Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion and the bor­ough, we will at­tack the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion and be­come the first city or town to look at traf­fic in such great de­tail," he said. "It is a prob­lem we will tack­le in 2011 and it is a prob­lem we are de­ter­mined to solve."

He al­so said the three wreck­ers which were hired to pa­trol Ch­agua­nas, wrecked hun­dreds of cars be­fore Christ­mas Day. Say­ing many mo­torists had dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting back their ve­hi­cles, Nages­sar said the best way to deal with this was to stop il­le­gal park­ing. "In T&T we like to park right out­side the store...There are rea­sons for this be­cause peo­ple are of­ten con­cerned about safe­ty," he said. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that free park­ing was avail­able in the bor­ough and cit­i­zens should take ad­van­tage of this. "Peo­ple have to be obe­di­ent and if they park, they must obey the law," Nages­sar said.

"We have good free park­ing in Ch­agua­nas at the cour­t­house. There is al­so free park­ing at Saith Park which could hold 300 cars. At HCU there is space to park 50 cars free of charge. The Cen­tre City Mall has a mod­ern car park but you have to pay there. We must obey the law and park prop­er­ly." The may­or al­so ex­plained that ven­dors were cleared off the street and placed in a fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­agua­nas. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that plans were afoot to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ty to a six-storey build­ing, where the ven­dors would oc­cu­py two storeys, while the oth­er four storeys would be used for park­ing. Nages­sar said the test­ing time for the traf­fic plan was at Christ­mas and it was ev­i­dent that every­thing worked out well.