The plan to con­vert Ari­api­ta Av­enue in­to a one-way route has been hailed as a step in the right di­rec­tion by the pres­i­dent of Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud. Aboud, how­ev­er, called for the plan to be ex­tend­ed be­yond Wood­brook and to in­clude St James and Long Cir­cu­lar. "This is a worth­while so­lu­tion to the prob­lems that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in the net­work," he said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "Con­vert­ing all the roads to a one-way grid would in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the roads and ease the frus­tra­tion of com­muters who are braced with heavy traf­fic, both on morn­ings and af­ter­noons, every day." Say­ing that a plan to deal with con­ges­tion in Wood­brook and St James was long over­due, Aboud said the ex­ist­ing roads were built in the colo­nial days and there­fore could no longer han­dle the heavy flow of traf­fic. "There is re­al­ly no way to make any head­way in the traf­fic woes but to con­vert the en­tire grid of Wood­brook and St James, and I be­lieve that is the so­lu­tion," Aboud said.

Say­ing the ini­tia­tive must be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed, Aboud urged that con­sul­ta­tion with all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers was nec­es­sary. "Once all the stake­hold­ers have a full un­der­stand­ing of the plan, the more ap­peal­ing it would be," Aboud said. He re­called that years ago, traf­fic around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain was two-way. "Even though one leav­ing Bel­mont has to dri­ve all the way around the Sa­van­nah now to get to St Ann's, it ac­tu­al­ly takes less time than when the roads were two-way," Aboud added. Ad­mit­ting there would be some pub­lic scep­ti­cism about the plan, Aboud at­trib­uted this to failed ini­tia­tives in the past. "So many pre­vi­ous plans have failed, and one can def­i­nite­ly un­der­stand the pub­lic's scep­ti­cism, but once every­thing is done prop­er­ly and with con­sul­ta­tion, peo­ple would have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of things."