Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

When the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture opened the Grant’s Road to La Brea In­ter­change sec­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way on Sep­tem­ber 10, it rep­re­sent­ed the end of an era with re­spect to this coun­try’s na­tion­al traf­fic agen­da. That ap­prox­i­mate­ly four-kilo­me­tre seg­ment was the last project un­der the soon-to-be-de­funct 1967 na­tion­al trans­porta­tion plan.  

A new pol­i­cy that guides how traf­fic on the land, sea, and air is be­ing de­vel­oped in T&T is said to be around six months away from com­ple­tion with some projects on this new agen­da al­ready in progress. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan gave Guardian Me­dia an ex­clu­sive look at some of the de­tailed traf­fic mit­i­gat­ing plans which will form part of the pol­i­cy be­ing de­vel­oped by con­sul­tants for $US120,000.

Speak­ing at the min­istry’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain in the com­pa­ny of his tech­ni­cal team, Sinanan ex­plained how over­due this coun­try has been for an up­dat­ed traf­fic plan.

“The min­istry has been suc­cess­ful in get­ting the ap­proval to do, once and for all, a trans­porta­tion plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go. That plan in­cludes land, sea, and air. So, since 1967 we have not had a plan. This plan is the vi­sion for trans­porta­tion and this plan will car­ry you hope­ful­ly for 20 to 30 years in the fu­ture,” Sinanan said.

How­ev­er, Sinanan was quick to add that mea­sures in the pol­i­cy, ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in mid-2024, are not the panacea for the grid­lock in the coun­try.

“This is not the so­lu­tion to traf­fic; this is to help with the traf­fic. We can­not build our­selves out of traf­fic jams, traf­fic jam is a re­al thing. Which city in the world doesn’t have traf­fic, and which coun­try in the world doesn’t have traf­fic? But you have to keep be­ing in­no­v­a­tive,” Sinanan posit­ed.

The plan will in­clude in­fra­struc­tur­al works and the use of tech­nol­o­gy to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic.  

Hay­den Phillip, the di­rec­tor of the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE) shared the on­go­ing and up­com­ing ini­tia­tives un­der the new traf­fic man­age­ment pol­i­cy with Guardian Me­dia. They are hop­ing that this ini­tia­tive, which rep­re­sents some of the short-term road traf­fic so­lu­tions, will bring re­lief to mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans.

O’Meara Road Up­grade

“We’re hav­ing a round­about and a one-way sys­tem. If you want to get in­to O’Meara Road now, some­times the traf­fic starts from Mau­si­ca Road be­cause some peo­ple want to go in­to the gas sta­tion. So, what we’re go­ing to do is have a round­about just where you have that Xtra Foods gro­cery there, we will have a me­di­an down the mid­dle so there’s no cross­ing. So, this one is ex­cit­ing, and added to that we will be widen­ing the last piece of high­way to Ari­ma which would be from An­drew Lane to the O’Meara Road. If you no­tice when you’re head­ing South on morn­ings now peo­ple un­der­stand the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion and they take the shoul­der so it’s no longer a fil­ter lane, it has miles, so what we’re do­ing is build­ing on in­creas­ing these lay­bys and fil­ter lanes,” Phillip ex­plained.

Tumpuna

“Now in Tumpuna, the de­sign is com­plet­ed and right now we’re in the process of (land) ac­qui­si­tion. We’re work­ing with the HDC be­cause a new hous­ing de­vel­op­ment is sup­posed to go there, so you know it’s more traf­fic. Any­one go­ing in­to La Hor­quet­ta there’s one lane, that one lane is very dan­ger­ous be­cause it comes in­to the oth­er two lanes. So just like we did at the Pi­ar­co Junc­tion, re­mem­ber there was on­ly one lane to en­ter Pi­ar­co, now you have two, so you don’t have that back­up. The same thing we will be do­ing at the Tumpuna Road, the two lanes will be head­ing in­to La Hor­quet­ta, we will be im­prov­ing the en­tire in­ter­sec­tion,” Phillip said.

“At that junc­tion, no­tice there’s a round­about,” he con­tin­ued point­ing at a screen that was play­ing a sim­u­la­tion of how the road­way is sup­posed to look on com­ple­tion of the project, “so if you want to go any­where be­tween Shops of Ari­ma, you can­not go up Tumpuna Road, this new road we will be build­ing there just west of Tumpuna Road will take you pass the traf­fic, all the malls and the food ar­eas and then you use the round­about and you go wher­ev­er you want. So these are some of the mea­sures we are us­ing whilst we wait for the in­ter­changes to come.”

En­deav­our

“If you’re go­ing in­to the PriceS­mart area you’d see some work go­ing on, it looks sim­ple, but we know it will be ef­fec­tive. Right now, you have three lanes go­ing in­to two and when you reach the bridge you have a 90-de­gree turn. So, we’re ba­si­cal­ly hav­ing four lanes to the bridge in ei­ther di­rec­tion, and we will be build­ing a re­tain­ing wall and widen­ing that curve on­to the bridge so the traf­fic can move much faster rather than slow down,” Phillip re­vealed.

“Now on the op­po­site side, this is the big­ger project, that is where we have to do some land ac­qui­si­tion. Nor­mal­ly peo­ple com­ing from the south and want­i­ng to get in­to Ch­agua­nas had to go fur­ther down and come down all through Chan Ram­lal and all those right turns, this will solve all of that, de­signs have been com­plet­ed al­ready ... ac­qui­si­tion next, then fund­ing,” Phillip added.

Chase Vil­lage to Ch­agua­nas

“Well, every­body knows about that traf­fic, ba­si­cal­ly what we’re do­ing now is widen­ing with a dif­fer­ence. We’re widen­ing to the cen­tre where you have the grass me­di­an so there­fore we no longer need that ca­ble bar­ri­er that keeps falling and that con­tin­u­ous main­te­nance. So, all the widen­ing will take place in the cen­tre, the de­sign will be com­plet­ed, and ready to go out to ten­der. Once the funds are avail­able, this is one you can see most like­ly next,” Phillip said with a hope­ful glance at Sinanan.

Munroe Road

“Munroe Road In­ter­change, that is a de­sign that we have had on the shelf for a while right now, and right now we're up­dat­ing the de­signs. Li­ais­ing with the traf­fic man­age­ment and the chief traf­fic en­gi­neer, we re­alised with the de­sign we have, we could do some tweak­ing and make it more ef­fi­cient. It al­so has some land ac­qui­si­tion is­sues,” Phillip re­vealed.

Mar­aval

“If you re­mem­ber Mar­aval, you would have known that ten years ago we would have built the round­about by Ken­tucky (KFC). We al­so had two oth­er phas­es to do, the prob­lem is ac­qui­si­tion. We fi­nal­ly have got­ten the ac­qui­si­tion for just by the bank on the bridge, ten­ders are out, just wait­ing to be award­ed, and we’ll be build­ing that bridge for four lanes, but in the in­ter­im, we will do three lanes,” Phillip ex­plained.

Phillip added that re­versible lanes with prop­er sig­nage will be used to ac­com­mo­date the hours of peak traf­fic.

“In the af­ter­noon you will have two lanes in, one out; re­verse in the morn­ing, two lanes out one in. But this is an on­go­ing project, it’s just a mat­ter of ac­qui­si­tion and fund­ing,” he added.

San Fer­nan­do

“The San Fer­nan­do By­pass, this one is a lit­tle backed be­cause we need to do some more stud­ies be­cause so many things changed in San Fer­nan­do but there are some low-hang­ing fruits that we want to take ad­van­tage of. If you know the Tarou­ba Link Road, up to go­ing in­to that mall just af­ter the school, we have two lanes but there are a lot of me­di­ans be­cause we did not en­vi­sion that lev­el of traf­fic. We will be mov­ing all those me­di­ans so we will have four lanes and we want to put a round­about on the in­ter­change it­self where all that con­flict takes place. That is not a high-cost project, so we ex­pect to see that with­in this new fis­cal year,” Phillip as­sured.