Yvonne Ba­boolal

Over the last few years the coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced ma­jor traf­fic night­mares caused by sig­nif­i­cant events and lit­tle seems to have changed. The sink hole on the Beetham High­way ear­li­er this week cost the coun­try some 280,000 man-hours due to traf­fic holdups, the Down­town Own­ers & Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) re­port­ed. DO­MA pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said the sad re­al­i­ty that came out of the in­ci­dent was that there were few new op­tions in road in­fra­struc­ture since In­de­pen­dence.

The T&T Guardian re­called a few mem­o­rable traf­fic jams.

• Red Bull Flug­tag Com­pe­ti­tion in Ch­aguara­mas

Stand­still traf­fic ri­valled ac­tu­al at­ten­dance at the in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion at Williams Bay, Ch­aguara­mas on Ju­ly 2, 2010, it was re­port­ed. There was even traf­fic at sea as an es­ti­mat­ed 40,000 head­ed to­wards the west­ern penin­su­la for the fun event in which fly­ing en­thu­si­asts and adren­a­line junkies launched home-made air­craft.

The West­ern Main Road be­came a pedes­tri­an-on­ly boule­vard for most of the day, and West­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice turned back dri­vers head­ing to the event be­cause no more cars could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la. Traf­fic jams were re­port­ed from as ear­ly as 6 am and at one time grid­lock ex­tend­ed as far back as the Beetham High­way.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, some 20,000 re­mained strand­ed in their cars en route to the venue and were even­tu­al­ly turned back a few hours be­fore sun­set. There was even traf­fic at sea as peo­ple crowd­ed pirogues at the Co­corite fish­ing de­pot which took them to the event. One per­son drowned when an over­crowd­ed pirogue over­turned and there were re­ports of rob­beries, pick­pock­et­ing and oth­er crimes. Some de­scribed it as the worst traf­fic ever wit­nessed.

Ian Fitzwilliam, chair­man of AS Bry­den, lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors of Red Bull, be­lieved that the lo­cal and re­gion­al or­gan­is­ers who man­aged the event did not an­tic­i­pate such a large num­ber of peo­ple. Fitzwilliam said Flug­tag or­gan­is­ers tried to put all the re­quired re­sources in place to keep the route as clear as pos­si­ble, but blamed peo­ple who he said ar­rived as ear­ly as 3 am and 4 am and parked bad­ly, caus­ing the mas­sive traf­fic build-up. He said po­lice and the Coast Guard did a good job try­ing to al­le­vi­ate the chaos.

Fitzwill­liam said the event would not be held in the west­ern penin­su­la again.

•Trop­i­cal storm warn­ing

On Oc­to­ber 29, 2010, there was an­oth­er ma­jor traf­fic headache with a trop­i­cal storm warn­ing. Trans­port hubs and su­per­mar­kets were jam-packed as peo­ple braced for Trop­i­cal Storm Tomas which was re­port­ed head­ing to­wards the Caribbean. Heed­ing warn­ings by the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Port-of-Spain em­ploy­ees left work places ear­ly and by mid­day City Gate and var­i­ous taxi stands were crowd­ed with anx­ious com­muters seek­ing to get home. Along the high­ways signs of pan­ic were ev­i­dent. Schools around the coun­try dis­missed class­es ear­ly, lead­ing to crawl­ing traf­fic from down­town Port-of-Spain and along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way all the way to Val­sayn.

• Ma­coya Bridge

The col­lapse of the Ma­coya Bridge on No­vem­ber 18, 2008 caused dri­vers head­ing west and east along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way to spend hours of traf­fic. The east­bound lane was closed to traf­fic from the wee hours of the morn­ing as en­gi­neers and Works Min­istry work­ers re­moved de­bris from un­der the bridge. Dri­vers head­ing east were di­vert­ed to Ma­coya Road and to­ward East­ern Main Road, then back to the high­way via Or­ange Grove Road, it was re­port­ed.