00:00 With the Sioux-Solomon-Hojoy highway extension to Point 14 completed, the Ministry of Works
00:06 and Transport is in the process of constructing an additional lane, northbound and southbound,
00:12 between Brentwood Mall and the Chase Village interchange.
00:16 We always have challenges where a vehicle may shut down, a big vehicle toting a load,
00:21 driving slow. So in most cases what you actually have is one lane flowing all the way from
00:27 Chagonas to San Fernando. The aim of this project is to add an additional lane to the
00:34 highway until we reach San Fernando and that will help to alleviate a lot of the traffic
00:39 congestion.
00:41 The Minister says the road will be widened by utilising the median and replacing the
00:46 cable barriers with concrete barriers.
00:49 So there will be a separation between the lanes and although it is said that the cable
00:55 barriers are the most friendly, it is very, very expensive and it seems not to be working
01:00 for us because cable barriers, once you touch the cable barrier, it drops to about 100 or
01:06 200 metres and you find that happening all the time and that is why it is difficult for
01:10 us to maintain it. I remember coming into office and there was a bill for repairs for
01:15 cable barriers for about $20 million, just for repairs.
01:19 This phase of the project is budgeted at $65 million, with an estimated time frame of about
01:25 at least four months. But the Minister says inconvenience should be minimal.
01:30 Most of the work on the road, if not all the road work, will be done in the night, from
01:35 nine to four. What you have happening now is off the road work. That will be done from
01:41 nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. So at the peak hours, there will be no work
01:48 taking place. However, once you have the off-road work going on, if you notice, the police is
01:54 managing the traffic in such a way that they are allowing, although we have one lane blocked
02:00 off, we are using the shoulder so you get back the two lanes.
02:04 This project is one of 11 such projects carded for this fiscal year.
02:08 Our programme this year is 11 projects that we are looking at to help with traffic alleviation.
02:14 We have this one in Chagonas, we have an additional two in Chagonas where we are trying to widen
02:19 some of the interchanges and so that we have, then we have the Maraval access because getting
02:23 in and out of Maraval is a nightmare for the people who live in that area. We have in Sandy
02:29 Grandy where we are doing a road to circle the town. We have San Fernando, the Taruba
02:35 Link Road.
02:36 Drive there to make sure that no town is more than half an hour apart.
02:41 Traffic alleviation aside, the Minister is also promising some relief from potholes.
02:46 A massive road repair programme where on the programme we intend to address all the roads
02:54 in Trinidad that need rehabilitating. We do have a problem in terms of the age of some
02:58 of the road infrastructure and there is a programme for repaving all the roads that
03:04 needs repaving on a phased basis.
03:07 Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
