SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

There was no traf­fic dis­rup­tion at the Curepe In­ter­sec­tion yes­ter­day as the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) had warned mo­torists to ex­pect some lev­el of in­con­ve­nience dur­ing work of the project.

In a re­lease on Fri­day, Nid­co warned the pub­lic, main­ly mo­torists and res­i­dents, to ex­pect traf­fic dis­rup­tion from 8 am to 6 pm along the east­bound lanes of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way near the Curepe In­ter­change.

The re­lease stat­ed that a min­i­mum of two lanes would re­main open to mo­torists along the east­bound lanes at all times, as they ad­vised mo­torists to ex­er­cise cau­tion, ob­serve all road signs and re­duce their speed when ap­proach­ing the work­site.

Taxi and maxi dri­vers who ply their trade from Curepe to Ch­agua­nas, Grand Bazaar, San Fer­nan­do and St He­le­na and back said they ex­pe­ri­enced no traf­fic build-up while us­ing the lanes.

Curepe to Ch­a­gu­nanas maxi taxi dri­ver Razia As­gar­ali said she had an­tic­i­pat­ed grid­lock yes­ter­day on hear­ing that there would be traf­fic dis­rup­tions, but things ran smooth­ly.

“Prob­a­bly if the dis­rup­tion was dur­ing the week dri­vers would have faced a lot more pres­sure. But we were tak­en by sur­prise.”

An­oth­er dri­ver Ja­son Vil­lafana said the on­ly thing that mo­torists and pas­sen­gers had to cau­tious about was dust from the heavy ma­chin­ery sta­tioned at the work­site.

“We can’t wait for the project to be com­plet­ed be­cause dur­ing the week is re­al traf­fic dri­vers does have to face. Dri­vers re­al­ly have been ex­er­cis­ing a lot of pa­tience,” Vil­lafana said.

A new traf­fic flow at the Curepe In­ter­sec­tion went in­to ef­fect in June.

In Feb­ru­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod for the $221 mil­lion project un­der­tak­en by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion which is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in No­vem­ber.

The project will al­le­vi­ate traf­fic from the East in­to Port-of-Spain.