Expanding the Road Network

Nov 07, 2012 Editorial

Last month, in our editorial, “Deadly road use”, we observed that while over 10,000 vehicles enter our country every month, this presented a downside risk. “Lack of a holistic approach to traffic challenges has seen a spectacular increase in the housing and commercial buildings on the East Bank and East Coast, without any thought as to how the increased traffic will be channelled.The authorities will have to create new roads around these new settlements.”
According to a report in our newspaper yesterday, it appears that the authorities have been mulling this possibility over the last few weeks. Transport Minister Robeson Benn revealed that in seeking an alternative roadway to the East Bank Demerara Public Road, officials of the Public Works Ministry made an aerial survey some weeks ago to ascertain a viable route.
This news is more than a bit incredulous, since this country has spent over US$105 million – loaned by the IDB in just the last five years (plus its own matching funds) – to rehabilitate our 240 miles of surfaced roads. Rehabilitation, improvement and extension of the road network are financed by external resources such as the IDB while routine maintenance of the rehabilitated network is financed by our own recurrent resources. We are ignoring, for now, the question as to whether we have been receiving ‘value for money’ on all this massive spending.
Each of the several loans spent at least 10% on studies, all of which indicated the need for alternative roadways to relieve congestion and safety in the 10-mile radius around Georgetown. Just two years ago, we received US$20 million to upgrade the East Bank Highway and expand it from two to four lanes between Providence and Diamond, while “providing parking lanes, bus stops, crossings for pedestrians, and bicycle lanes that will increase safety and reduce disruption to traffic flow.” That project is still a work in progress, so we do not know if it will deliver the promised 15% reduction in travel time plus increased safety.
By the middle of this year, we had signed an additional IDB loan for US$ 66 million – plus US$ 3million matching funds from the government – US$58 million of which are for civil works. The remaining US$10 million are for various studies and ‘institutional strengthening”.
What is interesting is that US$24 million is for works on the Sheriff St-Mandela Ave thoroughfare: “ including expansion, rehabilitation, improvement and construction of roads, construction of sidewalks, bikeways and streets, shoulder widening, construction and rehabilitation of bridges and culverts, incorporation of bus stops, parking lanes, passing lanes and other features to reduce congestion and improve safety, as well as medians, traffic lights, signage and other safety related works along the corridor, as well as any required environmental and social mitigation measures.”
In light of the above, we are therefore puzzled by Minister Benn’s statement on the alternative route to the East Bank Highway, according to our report, “if the road will be constructed from the junction at Aubrey Barker Road, squatters along Mandela Avenue will have to remove.” Would not the present $24 million Sheriff St-Mandela Ave project take care of that contingency? But the larger question is why the need for an alternative road east of, and parallel to, the East Bank Highway was not addressed within the ambit of the present $66 million IDB loan?
US$34 million has already been budgeted for East Coast, West Coast and West Bank Demerara road improvement along the lines of the Sheriff St- Mandela Ave project detailed above. Would it not have been prudent for the “East Coast” portion of the funds to be allocated for the alternate route, starting from Ogle? An even more feasible approach would be to construct the alternative route along the “Agriculture Road” between Mon Repos and Triumph, which already extends undisturbed, several miles into the backlands parallel to the East Bank Highway.
This latter option would serve to simultaneously open up to housing and industry almost all of the land that has become redundant because of the closure of LBI and Diamond Estates.

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