KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The ca­ble bar­ri­ers that pre­vent ve­hi­cles from veer­ing on­to the op­po­site side of the high­way will soon be phased out and re­placed with met­al guard rails.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan told the Sen­ate yes­ter­day that the bar­ri­ers pose a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in sev­er­al ar­eas along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way and Uri­ah But­ler High­way, sus­tain­ing fre­quent dam­age.

Sinanan said that while the ca­ble bar­ri­ers were cheap to in­stall, the main­te­nance was ex­pen­sive, re­call­ing he met an $18 mil­lion bill when he as­sumed of­fice in 2017. Fur­ther­more, he said the guard rails pro­vide bet­ter crash pro­tec­tion and low­er main­te­nance costs.

Sinanan was re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s ques­tion on when the in­stal­la­tion of new high­way bar­ri­ers and ca­bles will com­mence and the time­line for com­ple­tion of these projects. He asked the ques­tion, giv­en re­ports on the three trag­ic high­way deaths in 2023 re­sult­ing from ve­hic­u­lar crossovers ow­ing to the de­fi­cien­cies in high­way bar­ri­ers and ca­ble in­fra­struc­ture.

Sinanan said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s (MOWT) High­ways Di­vi­sion fo­cus­es on road user safe­ty and reg­u­lar­ly re­pairs and main­tains the ca­ble bar­ri­ers. He said it was MOWT’s view that these types of bar­ri­ers were not the best so­lu­tion and took a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion to re­place them with guard rails.

Sinanan said MOWT de­vel­oped and is im­ple­ment­ing its Me­di­an Bar­ri­er Pro­gramme to re­move all ca­ble bar­ri­ers and re­place them with guard rails over three years.

Phase I en­tails the in­stal­la­tion of 5.2 km of W-type met­al beam guard rails along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way in Ca­roni, 8.34 km along Solomon Ho­choy High­way and 12.6 km along the same high­way in Vic­to­ria West.

“In this phase, we are at­tempt­ing to re­move and re­place 26.2 km. Ten­ders were in­vit­ed via the open ten­der (process) in 2023 for these projects in or­der to en­sure com­pet­i­tive­ness and val­ue for mon­ey. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, due to dis­crep­an­cies in the eval­u­a­tion re­port, the pro­cure­ment process had to be ter­mi­nat­ed. The pack­age will be re-ten­dered short­ly in 2024. In the in­ter­im, the min­istry will con­tin­ue its pro­gramme of in-house main­te­nance of ca­ble bar­ri­ers,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan said in terms of main­tain­ing the guard rails, the MOWT was im­ple­ment­ing a sys­tem to main­tain the in­fra­struc­ture in-house as it is eas­i­er. He said MOWT in­stalled the rails in the past and had the ma­chin­ery to straight­en them when im­pact­ed. How­ev­er, this stopped some years ago.

Asked by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal if MOWT was con­sid­er­ing a well-re­sourced, ded­i­cat­ed unit to main­tain the bar­ri­er, Sinanan said the Traf­fic Man­age­ment Branch and Bridges, Land­slip and Traf­fic Man­age­ment Unit fo­cus­es on road safe­ty. He said MOWT is de­vel­op­ing in-house ca­pa­bil­i­ties to strength­en those branch­es.

“It will cost us a lot cheap­er to have the ma­chin­ery and to do it in-house be­cause it is just a mat­ter of in­creas­ing the labour force. It is not rock­et sci­ence to straight­en these guard rails. Once you have the ma­chin­ery, we have the labour avail­able, it can be done a lot faster than go­ing through the whole process of ten­der­ing and pri­vate con­trac­tors.”