Garth Rattray | The wrong legacy (Part 1)

I'm in favour of progress, of upgrading our infrastructure and our roads. We have long ago outgrown our housing solutions, water supply, power supply, public transport system, roads, public health facilities, schools, prisons, police stations and God knows what else.

This administration has embarked on its multibillion-dollar 'Legacy Roads' projects. However, veritable seas of newly imported motor vehicles are parked, in several lots, especially by Marcus Garvey Drive, silently waiting to fill the spaces that will be provided by the new roads. Soon, we will be back to traffic jams and bottlenecks in several places.

In spite of all the expert input into the project, there are several glaring errors at Barbican Square. Because of the poor road outlay, people end up ignoring dedicated turning-lane markings or must change lanes to avoid being forced into the wrong direction. Traffic moves a bit faster, but there's a bottleneck to the west. Because of the flood of motor vehicles at peak times, I have continued using alternative routes.

Obviously, we need to come up with other ways, including much better public transport, using alternative, fairly dormant roads and possibly staggering working hours to combat the growing overcrowding on our roads. More roads and wider roads are great, but they are temporary measures.

From as far back as the early 1980s, my father, of blessed memory, suggested a prodigious and ambitious, long-term solution when he was city engineer at the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation - a circumferential thoroughfare with 'spokes' of lesser roads connected to a central transport hub where commuters would be encouraged to park their vehicles and use various types of public transport within the city limits. He also proposed routing the northbound Constant Spring Road traffic along roadways constructed on the government-owned lands adjacent to the parallel gully.

As usual, the administration of that day paid little attention and turned a blind eye to squatting on the gully banks. Now, some people are being displaced to facilitate the current Constant Spring Road Legacy Project. This massive, expensive, disruptive undertaking could have been significantly reduced if the political directorate were blessed with unbiased foresight.

The rushed Legacy Road Projects are being undertaken concomitantly, wreaking havoc in several key places. The total resources were not put on one project at a time to dramatically reduce the period of disruption. That would also avoid citizens having to go from one chaotic zone into another and cumulative traffic gridlock.

Open trenches, mounds of dirt, dust, water and telecommunications disruptions, repeated digging of the same trenches, long delays for surface restoration, poor coordination between various bodies, loss of income and nightmarish traffic congestion plague citizens daily.

Until commuters can quickly, easily and safely access public transport, our traffic woes will never end. Concepts are hatched, plans made, solidified and eminent domain is invoked to acquire lands for the execution of the roadworks. Contrary to popular belief, we don't really own the land that we bought with our blood, sweat and tears and continually pay taxes on. We are either mere 'tenants' in common or joint 'tenants'. The State can take it from us on a whim.

A patient almost drowned me in tears because the proposed Legacy Road was going to be very close to the front of the family business, their only source of income. The Government acquired (took) the entire building. There was compensation for the building, but not for the lost business, and they don't have the resources to relocate and start over. One wonders if a few metres in another direction would have saved untold distress to that family. Would a way be found to adjust the roadway if the business were deemed to be 'important'?

Next week: Part 2.

- Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.