Richard Lord

Re­main­ing traf­fic lights on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt (CR) High­way at El So­cor­ro are to be re­moved on April 28, al­low­ing a free flow of traf­fic be­tween the CR/Uri­ah But­ler In­ter­change at Bam­boo and the Light­house in Port-of-Spain. This was re­vealed by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er at yes­ter­day's post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. Traf­fic lights at Aranguez were re­moved ear­li­er this year as the in­ter­change at that lo­ca­tion was com­plet­ed and opened.

Warn­er said the lat­est mea­sure is in­tend­ed to fur­ther re­duce traf­fic con­ges­tion in­to Port-of-Spain.

"You will have a free flow of traf­fic with­out any traf­fic lights," he added. He said yes­ter­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing ap­proved the ac­qui­si­tion of lands at Preysal, Cou­va in cen­tral Trinidad to con­struct a fly­over to al­so re­duce sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic con­ges­tion in that area. "Some­times for miles on end you can have traf­fic and it takes you two or three hours at times to leave (get out of it)," he added. He said ramps and a round­about are to be con­struct­ed at the lo­ca­tion to al­low for a free flow of traf­fic in to and out of Cou­va, Preysal, Pt Lisas and near­by dis­tricts. Warn­er al­so said the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way ex­ten­sion east of O'Meara, Ari­ma will be opened on March 21; a new bridge in Mt Pleas­ant, Ari­ma will be opened on March 28 and a pub­lic road near the Coun­try Club, Mar­aval, on April 4.

Warn­er said in ad­di­tion to the re­duc­tion of traf­fic snarls on the re­spec­tive high­ways, the moves are al­so in­tend­ed to re­duce "the road rage we are hav­ing on our roads these days." In the wake of a de­ci­sion by the Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Com­pa­ny of T&T (VEM­COTT) to ter­mi­nate the ser­vices of 28 me­chan­ics. Warn­er said cit­i­zens were ad­vised to ap­ply to the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) for jobs as me­chan­ics. He said the for­mer VEM­COTT em­ploy­ees may all be hired by the PTSC. Warn­er said the PTSC was mov­ing to re-es­tab­lish a de­part­ment to re­pair the PTSC's fleet of bus­es. He al­so said de­lap­i­dat­ed roads in Gas­par­il­lo and oth­er parts of the coun­try will be un­der re­pair from next week. Res­i­dents of Caratal Road have been protest­ing the state of the road in their area. Warn­er said he had writ­ten to many MPs ask­ing for a list of roads in need of re­pair across the coun­try.