The cost of the new traf­fic plan for west Port-of-Spain is $2 to $3 mil­lion and count­ing. So says Adande Pig­gott, trans­porta­tion plan­ner at the Min­istry of Works. Mak­ing the signs alone cost an es­ti­mat­ed $1 mil­lion, Pig­gott said yes­ter­day. He said the cost of pro­duc­ing maps, fly­ers and news­pa­pers in­serts to be dis­trib­uted to the gen­er­al pub­lic was a sep­a­rate cost which was yet to be fi­nalised. Pig­gott said patch­ing the roads, paint­ing and sig­nage com­prised the in­fra­struc­tur­al costs. "Then there is the labour cost. The over­all cost could be be­tween $2 to $3 mil­lion and then there are the maps, which is an­oth­er cost...we have to cal­cu­late every­thing to­geth­er," Pig­gott added.

He was speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry's of­fice, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain. Pig­gott said there were al­so mi­nor er­rors re­lat­ing to road mark­ings and the in­stal­la­tion of some of the traf­fic signs. "We are go­ing to do an in­ven­to­ry and erect the nec­es­sary signs that we over­looked over the week­end," he said. The pro­pos­al, Pig­gott added, was aimed at re­duc­ing "a num­ber of fric­tion ar­eas" and im­prove mo­bil­i­ty. "We see it is be­com­ing a suc­cess but we still need to eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion to ad­dress all con­cerns," he added. He said since last No­vem­ber the min­istry was gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the plan, in­clud­ing traf­fic vol­ume, in­ter­sec­tion and pedes­tri­an counts and trav­el time sur­veys. "We have been deal­ing with the geo­met­rics-the width of the road­ways and SWOT (strength, weak­ness, op­por­tu­ni­ties and threats) analy­sis, which tells us what we could do with a spe­cif­ic area," he said.

Pig­gott said a meet­ing was ex­pect­ed to take place on Fri­day with the po­lice to im­ple­ment pos­si­ble so­lu­tions. "We are meet­ing with res­i­dents again next week to op­ti­mise the plan," he added. The traf­fic man­age­ment in­spec­tors, Pig­gott added, were col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion at crit­i­cal points from 5 am yes­ter­day. He said dur­ing ex­treme peak pe­ri­od in the morn­ing at Ari­api­ta Av­enue: "It takes about 24 min­utes to trav­el 1.5 miles. Peo­ple could walk a mile in about eight min­utes and run a mile in about five min­utes. "With the plan we re­alised we crossed from the Mar­aval Park­way in­to Colville Street in about six min­utes. So there is a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in trav­el time."