Melis­sa Doughty

Min­is­ter of Works Em­manuel George says his min­istry is con­sid­er­ing the use of pedes­tri­an cross­ings to as­sist peo­ple in St James. With the new traf­fic scheme im­ple­ment­ed on Ju­ly 16, cit­i­zens who live, trav­el and work in St James have been com­plain­ing of the in­creased dif­fi­cul­ty they face in cross­ing the streets. One em­ploy­ee in the area said she was wit­ness to at least two near-miss­es since the new plan was in­tro­duced. With this tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, George has an­nounced that changes will be made to ac­com­mo­date pedes­tri­ans.

Asked when these changes will come in­to ef­fect, the min­is­ter said he could not say, since he has to meet with his tech­ni­cal team and then de­cide where the cross­ings will be placed. He de­scribed the en­tire scheme as a work in progress, say­ing small changes are be­ing made to the scheme all the time. Oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties ex­ist, such as re­ver­sion to two-way traf­fic, but, he said, peo­ple need to give the plan time to work. "It has on­ly been nine days. Peo­ple need to let things set­tle down and get ac­cus­tomed to us­ing it," he said.

Every­thing can­not be changed, he said, based up­on peo­ple's ini­tial re­ac­tions. When asked about the taxi routes, which have be­come an­oth­er chal­lenge for com­muters head­ing in­to St James, George said his tech­ni­cal team will meet with the dri­vers to find a so­lu­tion. The min­is­ter al­so said he will meet with the dri­vers a month af­ter the scheme's im­ple­men­ta­tion. He urged the pub­lic to give the scheme a try, say­ing he be­lieves it will work, and said af­fect­ed cit­i­zens can e-mail him their com­ments about the traf­fic scheme at min­is­ter@mowt.gov.tt.