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Diamond interchange safer, more practical than T-Junctions

Nov 03, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – In recent bilateral engagements, we have agreed upon the need for critical infrastructure at the correct scale. The Vice President also highlighted the need for infrastructure in a recent press conference. We may have forgotten, albeit temporarily, on account of COVID-19 restrictions, that we have a tremendous traffic problem owing to the fact that our inner city is not placed in its rightful context – that the city is in fact fed by an interstate highway that borders the contours of the conservancy, with on and off ramps and connections therewith, to bridges over the Demerara and to highway segments that drive us to the East-West link of Suriname.
Georgetown is an inner city, flanked on one side by the sea and river and on the other side, by a highway zone, provisionally viewed as being near to the contours of the conservancy. This highway will fetch us at higher speed toward the rising number of ports on our coast and bank and get us to work and home across the map by allowing us to go faster, outside of the city. The Linden-Soesdyke Highway sits in silence, a tantalizing segment of this inter-state highway. It is like a sleeping dragon waiting to unfurl – or rather to be continued toward the coast, where it eventually meets with the proposed Ogle-Diamond Road link.
In my view this road link should not host T-junctions, like the one at Sheriff and Rupert Craig, where I myself witnessed firsthand, a fatal accident, on my way to the sea wall. Highways do not have T-junctions, but interchanges or exits. There are any number of creative solutions to the interchange problem. One possible solution that can get us connected to the Ogle-Diamond Road link, is the Diamond interchange – a popular raised-road solution from the USA, that gets you on and off from all directions, or across and over, without the need for a T-junction or even traffic lights. You sort of flow on and off of it using what our friends in Trinidad call ‘filter lanes’.
I believe that the diamond interchange is a good start for us because it is relatively simple to design and should be affordable to build, while keeping us in the clear as the future unfolds. I also imagine several of these getting us onto the flyover that takes us over the Demerara.
It seems like a hard map to work with right now though, for we have filled in many blanks on the East Bank in our bid to respond to our housing demand. Diamond interchanges will require space to pull off. Highways also need to be flanked by sound barriers like mounds with planted trees. I am, as we speak, equipping myself with open-source design tools to explore alternatives, albeit with dated satellite imagery. As a person who lost the use of a limb due to a road accident, I really hope for our map to turn out great. I wait with bated breath from the next release by Public Works and the CH&PA.
Roads will set our entire construction agenda for years to come. We need to get them right.

Sincerely,
Emille Giddings

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