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Friday, August 8, 2025

Diego Highway expansion done

by

20140812

Two months af­ter the loop be­hind Ac­ton Court in Diego Mar­tin was tem­porar­i­ly closed to fa­cil­i­tate the high­way ex­pan­sion project, of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture say they are now ready for the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny.In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Mon­day, di­rec­tor of the High­ways Di­vi­sion Roger Ganesh con­firmed the com­ple­tion of road works in the area and said they were now await­ing the min­istry's de­ci­sion on when the road would be re­opened.

The next phase of the ex­pan­sion project, to con­struct a fly­over from Pow­der Mag­a­zine to Colum­bus Cir­cle in West­moor­ings, is set to start short­ly, Ganesh said, adding a de­sign con­sul­tant was ex­pect­ed to be se­lect­ed by the end of this month.An­tic­i­pat­ing that it will take ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months to com­plete the de­sign and a fur­ther three months to com­plete the ten­der­ing process, Ganesh said he was hope­ful that con­struc­tion on this phase will be­gin by Jan­u­ary.

Asked about the bud­get for this phase of the project, Ganesh said while the fi­nal fig­ure would be af­fect­ed by the de­sign, the es­ti­mat­ed cost is $100 mil­lion.Ganesh ex­pects the fly­over will be a quick­er com­mute for dri­vers go­ing to and from the west­ern penin­su­la and be­come a cru­cial link for peo­ple in Diego Mar­tin, Pe­tit Val­ley, Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Care­nage, West­moor­ings and Ch­aguara­mas.

Claim­ing the tem­po­rary changes to the traf­fic routes in Diego Mar­tin had been work­ing "great and things were go­ing good," Ganesh said he was con­cerned about dri­vers ex­ceed­ing the speed lim­it and the reck­less dri­ving that had been wit­nessed since the ex­pan­sion project was com­plet­ed."Apart from those two things, we have had a great re­sponse from every­one," he said.

Al­so on the min­istry's agen­da is a plan to bring a con­sul­tant on board in De­cem­ber to be­gin work on ex­tend­ing the Diego Mar­tin High­way from Di­a­mond Vale to Bagatelle. This has al­ready re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval, Ganesh said.He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that this phase would re­quire more time, as a fea­si­bil­i­ty study need­ed to be car­ried out and prop­er­ty ac­qui­si­tion talks held with those af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing home and busi­ness own­ers.


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