Kali­fa Clyne

The new ex­per­i­men­tal traf­fic plan to be launched in St James on Mon­day is a demon­stra­tion of peo­ple pow­er, says Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Em­manuel George. He made the com­ment dur­ing its launch yes­ter­day at the am­phithe­atre, St James. He said the plan, which ben­e­fit­ed from heavy con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents, must be a les­son for the rest of the coun­try.

"We have to stop this back­ward be­hav­iour of burn­ing tyres and block­ing roads to com­mu­ni­cate. Burn­ing tyres and block­ing roads is a sign of weak­ness," he said. George, who ad­mit­ted he had lit­tle in­volve­ment in the plan­ning process of the scheme, said it was most­ly the work of the St James com­mu­ni­ty, led by pres­i­dent of the Com­mu­ni­ty Im­prove­ment Com­mit­tee Earl Cros­by, with tech­ni­cal in­put from Min­istry of Works of­fi­cials.

Cros­by, who pre­sent­ed a map of the traf­fic plan, said the ma­jor changes took place on the back streets in the area. The West­ern Main Road re­mains the same ex­cept for park­ing re­stric­tions be­tween 3 am and 6 am and 3 pm and 6 pm on week­days.

Traf­fic plan to launch on Mon­day

Streets such as Salazar, Romeo, Mooni­ram, Cal­cut­ta, Madras and Ben­gal will all be one-way head­ing north from Mon­day. Mathu­ra, Jer­ry, Bom­bay and Agra Streets ,along with Bay and Brun­ton Roads, will be­come one-way south-bound streets. The min­istry will mon­i­tor the plan over the next 90 days.

Min­istry of­fi­cials said all nec­es­sary road signs would be com­plete by Mon­day as 95 per cent al­ready were com­plet­ed. To fur­ther fa­cil­i­tate the tran­si­tion to the new traf­fic rules, traf­fic war­dens will be post­ed in St James from Mon­day. Traf­fic war­den su­per­vi­sor for PoS, Joseph Fer­eira said war­dens would be moved from in­side the city to help. "We are short on man­pow­er, but from 6 am to 6pm we will have war­dens in St James," Fer­eira said.