Gov’t Looking at Plans to Introduce Flyover Bridges

Government is examining plans to introduce flyover bridges in an effort to ease traffic congestion in Kingston and other major urban centres.
Minister of Housing, Transport, Water and Works, Robert Pickersgill, who spoke to JIS News on Thursday (Feb. 8), following a tour of road repair and modification works in Portmore and along Spanish Town Road, said that “in terms of the corporate area, we have reached the stage where we are talking about flyover bridges. We have the designs and we have started talking to the relevant people and even without the resources, this has to be in the not too distant future.”
Meanwhile, he indicated that some $100 million would be spent to repair Passage Fort Drive, Port Henderson Road and along the Mandela Highway, while rehabilitation work from Marcus Garvey Drive to Portia Simpson Miller Square, was projected to cost some $500 million. He assured Portmore residents that the additional road work would not affect the toll rates.
Apologising to residents for the congestion being experienced on Marcus Garvey Drive, Minister Pickersgill said that the government did not anticipate that the traffic flow would have grown 100 per cent in less than six months.
He cited statistics provided by the National Works Agency (NWA), which indicated that the traffic flow on Marcus Garvey Drive was far more than the traffic going to Spanish Town. “Therefore, a set of short-term measures will be introduced to ease the congestion. In the past, where they (measures) have been implemented, they have been successful,” the Minister said.