A ma­jor traf­fic and road net­work project is ex­pect­ed to be rolled out from No­vem­ber in San Fer­nan­do on a phased ba­sis as part of the Wa­ter­front De­vel­op­ment.

Speak­ing at the first of two manda­to­ry con­sul­ta­tions for the is­suance of a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­ment Clear­ance (CEC), at City Hall, San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi boast­ed, “This is in short, big news for San Fer­nan­do.”

With fund­ing al­ready ap­proved, he said the road net­work project which is 100 per cent lo­cal as it was de­signed by PURE un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

He said the Wa­ter­front De­vel­op­ment has been di­vid­ed in­to sev­er­al an­chor projects in­clud­ing the fish­ing port, Plaza San Car­los, two hous­ing sites to ac­com­mo­date about 800 homes on 14 acres at the PTSC bus yard and five acres at the Min­istry of Works site, and the hos­pi­tal car park.

In ad­di­tion, he said there would al­so be broad­er an­chors in­clud­ing the An­gli­can church de­vel­op­ment, the re­de­vel­op­ment of the mag­is­trate’s courts and the de­vel­op­ment of Skin­ner Park which has al­ready be­gun.

Al-Rawi added, “To cause this de­vel­op­ment the road net­work needs to take care of the vol­ume of users which are about to come in.”

Al-Rawi said the road works will in­clude the sea wall restora­tion, widen­ing of the road, the in­tro­duc­tion of round­about fa­cil­i­ties and the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of traf­fic net­work in­to two and four-lane arrange­ments.

He said it al­so in­volves con­nect­ing roads such as Rush­worth Street, Ruth Av­enue and Todd Street to en­sure easy ac­cess from the By­pass and High­way to the Wa­ter­front.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi the sec­ond manda­to­ry con­sul­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed to be held next week and the sub­mis­sions will be passed on to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty for the CEC, fol­lowed by the award of the con­tract.

He as­sured that the Girl Guides, the Pres­by­ter­ian Syn­od, Na­pari­ma Col­lege and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions will not be re­lo­cat­ed, as Al-Rawi said there was no need for land ac­qui­si­tion.

In fact, he ex­pects the land val­ue of those prop­er­ties to sky­rock­et be­cause of all the de­vel­op­ment.

On­ly on Tues­day Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley put con­trac­tors on alert about up­com­ing jobs, as he said gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to con­struct over­pass­es “East of Curepe” to help ease traf­fic con­ges­tion.