Both the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS are adamant there was no need to open the north­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way on Tues­day.

When thou­sands of com­muters left of­fices in and around the Cap­i­tal City on Tues­day, many didn’t get to their homes, es­pe­cial­ly those in cen­tral and south, un­til three or four hours lat­er.

It was all any­one could talk about on so­cial me­dia.

“South peo­ple who work­ing town reach­ing home mid­night to leave quar­ter past mid­night to go back to work to­mor­row,” lo­cal co­me­di­an Kwame Weekes tweet­ed.

“A dri­ve that usu­al­ly takes 23 mins, just took me 3 hours and 45 mins,” said ra­dio pre­sen­ter Vir­mala Balka­ran on her Face­book page. “POS to Ch­agua­nas was a night­mare. God be with all of you who are still stuck in that traf­fic.”

Days of per­sis­tent rain­fall cul­mi­nat­ed in the worst fears of many com­muters, wa­ter on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way’s south­bound lane near Ca­roni.

Guardian Me­dia’s Kalain Ho­sein gave an ear­ly warn­ing on Mon­day night on so­cial me­dia when wa­ter first start­ed creep­ing along the shoul­der. By mid­day it had spread across the left and cen­tre lanes. The TTPS stepped in to di­vert traf­fic to en­sure the safe­ty of dri­vers.

But that’s where the is­sue start­ed. What should have been three lanes turned in­to two or one de­pend­ing on the time; com­bined with the added de­lay caused by dri­vers who slowed down to gawk at the height of the riv­er.

As traf­fic con­tin­ued well in­to the night and in­to the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day morn­ing, two ques­tions were asked wide­ly on so­cial me­dia:

Why didn’t the au­thor­i­ties open the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to ease east­bound traf­fic? And why didn’t they di­vert traf­fic on­to the north­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

At the 5pm joint min­is­te­r­i­al press con­fer­ence on Tues­day the an­nounce­ment was made to open the Bus Route at 6pm.

“The rea­son why we have to use the time is 6:00 be­cause we have to make sure the mass trans­porta­tion that us­es the Bus Route is al­lowed to leave Port of Spain,” Sinanan said.

But to open the North­bound lane, Sinanan not­ed, “The Po­lice are on site. If the po­lice de­cide they want to open a lane on the op­po­site side, then we will fa­cil­i­tate that but the last in­for­ma­tion I had was that the wa­ter is re­ced­ing and if that hap­pens then there’s no need for that.”

Fol­low­ing up the ques­tion on Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia reached out to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to de­ter­mine who makes the call and ex­act­ly what it would take to di­vert traf­fic on­to the op­po­site lane.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Symon De No­bri­ga told Guardian me­dia, “The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port would be re­spon­si­ble for de­ci­sions re­gard­ing al­ter­na­tive traf­fic routes, when these sit­u­a­tions arise. The most re­cent ex­am­ple I can think of would have been the di­ver­sion of traf­fic in the Co­corite Stretch to ac­com­mo­date emer­gency re­pairs to a WASA Main.”

That de­ci­sion is made in con­junc­tion with the po­lice traf­fic branch.

The TTPS’ of­fi­cial po­si­tion is that there was no need to di­vert the traf­fic at the time.

“The sit­u­a­tion was as­sessed ear­li­er on by the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol com­mand and one of the un­der­pin­ning fac­tors was that the left lane of the three lane car­riage­way which had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 inch­es of wa­ter or less was pass­able by both light ve­hi­cles and cars,” The TTPS said in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia.

“Cars would dri­ve through deep­er wa­ters when Port of Spain is flood­ed. High­way car­riage­way di­ver­sions are con­sid­ered usu­al­ly when at least two lanes are com­pro­mised which did not oc­cur yes­ter­day[Tues­day].”

The TTPS added there were mul­ti­ple fac­tors which caused the traf­fic, in­clud­ing the flood­ing on the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road which serves as an al­ter­nate route for dri­vers, forc­ing dri­vers to ac­cess the south­ern main road from the low­er parts of the high­way. The TTPS added there was a high vol­ume of large heavy goods ve­hi­cles at Wright­son Road, flood­ing at South Quay, a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent on east­bound lane of the Beetham High­way and lat­er that evening, and then a fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dent along the South­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way in the vicin­i­ty of the Bri­an Lara Crick­et ground which caused ob­struc­tion on both the north and South­bound lanes.

By Wednes­day morn­ing the TTPS be­gan is­su­ing up­dates to re­porters on the state of the high­way. “Flood­wa­ters have now crossed the all three lanes of the car­riage­way. Cur­rent­ly the cen­tre and mid­dle lane are pass­able by all class­es of ve­hi­cles but the left lane is on­ly pass­able by high trucks and SU­Vs. Dri­vers are im­plored to re­duce speed pro­ceed with cau­tion through the area, the up­date said.

That up­date was enough for many com­pa­nies to be­gin send­ing their em­ploy­ees home.

By the af­ter­noon, the ODPM had tak­en over the up­dates.The last one came at 3:40PM, say­ing, “rel­a­tive to the Ca­roni Fly­over and Guaya­mare Riv­er, there is a free flow of traf­fic ob­served on all three lanes”

Fol­low­ing ma­jor floods on Oc­to­ber 19, 2018, the event that caused the un­prece­dent­ed Green­vale flood­ing, the south­bound lane was com­plete­ly flood­ed and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port said on­ly high ve­hi­cles and trucks were be­ing al­lowed to di­vert to the north­bound lane, which was al­so flood­ed, un­til Munroe Road.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day for­mer po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith who was com­mis­sion­er at the time said he was able to use the space in the high­way to di­vert cars on­to the road. He said he co­or­di­nat­ed with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, get­ting sup­port from them to pro­vide cones and lights while us­ing the po­lice to di­rect and guide traf­fic.

“That al­lowed the traf­fic to flow; ba­si­cal­ly com­mon sense. Think­ing out of the box,” Grif­fith said.