Dri­ving in and out of Scar­bor­ough be­came eas­i­er for com­muters on Fri­day with the open­ing of the new North­side Con­nec­tor Road. The new road links Gar­den­side Street and the North­side Road. The 250-me­tre road cost $3,494,783 to con­struct. Lo­cal com­pa­nies Kai En­gi­neer­ing and Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed and Parks In­ter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed helmed the project which start­ed on June 18, 2012 and was com­plet­ed on De­cem­ber 21.

The road will di­vert traf­fic away from the cen­tre of Scar­bor­ough and re­duce con­ges­tion on Car­ring­ton Street. Dri­vers will al­so have bet­ter ac­cess to up­town Scar­bor­ough. Dur­ing the open­ing, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don said the road open­ing demon­strat­ed the com­mit­ment of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to bring ad­di­tion­al com­fort to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

"The in­crease of trans­porta­tion in­di­cates an in­crease in the qual­i­ty of life as To­ba­go de­vel­ops," he said. The road will al­so cre­ate easy ac­cess to the Gar­den­side park­ing lot. Chief ad­min­is­tra­tor of the THA Dr El­lis Bur­ris said Scar­bor­ough's de­vel­op­ment was now at an em­bry­on­ic stage. "What is hap­pen­ing here is part of a process that start­ed with the clean-up of il­le­gal ven­dors," he said.

The road open­ing was part of the Scar­bor­ough Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion Project which is be­ing un­der­tak­en by the THA. Oth­er ini­tia­tives in the beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project in­clude im­prove­ment in the fish port and the con­struc­tion of a board­walk for pedes­tri­ans along Car­ring­ton Street, as well as the restora­tion of sev­er­al land­marks, in­clud­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion Build­ing, Old Works Build­ing and the Scar­bor­ough Methodist Church.