Rough roads

When one of the handful of students at Claverty Cottage Primary, Jamaica’s now-least populated institution, broke a limb several years ago, it was up to principal Julane King-Walker to transport the child several miles to hospital.

Five miles from the peak of the Blue Mountains, the rustic Claverty Cottage in Portland has no public transportation service, and with the few vehicles from the community already gone for the day, King-Walker had to brave the treacherous, rocky, and slippery roadway down the mountainside for help.

With every shift and jerk on the daunting two-hour journey to the Buff Bay Community Hospital, the female student screamed in agony, clutching her broken arm as she wailed. To this day, those chilling sounds remain with King-Walker, who, along with residents of the village, blamed the deplorable roadway as the main chokehold of the dying community.

Even against a dearth of potable water and other challenges to social amenities, deplorable road infrastructure was fingered as the main push factor for residents migrating from Belvedere, another deep rural, rustic community in Portland, where residents said only one taxi driver is brave enough to take on the hilly terrain leading from the Buff Bay main road to the community.

With the Belvedere Primary School shuttered in 2015, students from the community were forced to relocate to nearby Buff Bay Primary and other neighbouring schools in the parish. Now, that brave – or brazen – taxi operator is paid $300 per child/trip to sometimes take up to eight students down the twisting hillside to school each morning, some of them bouncing about in the trunk of the station wagon.

It’s a similar routine in the evenings. Failing that, residents could pay up to $3,000 for them, and their children to return home, and that is only if one finds a taxi operator willing to risk damaging his vehicle.

According to long-time Belvedere resident Hubert Taylor, the road is the main reason youngsters born in the community leave and never come back, and why the elderly are often removed from the area before they become immobile.

It is also customary for expecting mothers in the community to be relocated as getting to the hospital during times of labour is extremely dangerous.

“And this is what we have to contend with. This is why the community is dying. The road situation is our biggest problem,” said Taylor, whose son, Shanquan Taylor, 14, lives for the thrill of riding to school in the back of the taxi. On the darker side, however, Taylor said it is a matter of serious concern for the sustainability of his beloved community.

A similar story can be made for Preston Hill Primary in St Mary where the topsy-turvy road surface leading to the school, not only choked off sustenance for the school but also the community. Once a bubbling area, Preston Hill has been reduced to a snail’s haven.

Urban challenges

It was not immediately clear how much motor vehicle parts have been imported into Jamaica in recent years, but several new and used parts outlets within the Corporate Area have reported increases in their sales of front-end parts following damage caused by the deplorable road infrastructure.

It seems taxi operators are hardest hit, and that parts from their Toyota Probox are most sought after. Several social media videos have emerged of taxi operators within the Corporate Area and Portmore taking road repairs into their own hands, using stones, concrete, and other materials to patch roads in their communities. In other communities, residents have blocked roads and protested the state of the roadway in their communities.

Oraine ‘Superdog’ Heron, manager of AutoBoyz Used Parts Limited on Hagley Park Road in Kingston, said, “A used shock normally lasts up to six months. Right now if you get even two months out of a used shock, that is a whole heap. And it has nothing to do with the quality of the shocks because we are talking about genuine used shocks,” noting that even genuine parts bought new are buckling under the demands of Jamaica’s road conditions.

“Front hubs and control arms are the same thing. Rack end and tie rod end are the same thing. The demand for these parts has risen at least 20 per cent in recent weeks,” he said, pouring cold water on the debate on the quality of used parts versus new ones. There is no real difference in performance and longevity due to the road conditions, he argued.

“You will buy new shocks, but at the same time you won’t get the strut mounts or springs with it like we sell here, and many of the times these things are damaged as well and you have to buy those. So, in the end, it will cost you more for the genuine shocks which can run you up to $35,000 new versus genuine used shocks for $8,500. So sometimes it’s better to just get the used shocks and make one repair,” he explained, noting that operators of Proboxes, AD Wagons, Honda Streams, and Step Wagons, are the usual customers demanding front-end parts as they complain about the roads.

A used control arm for a Toyota Probox at AutoBoyz costs roughly $6,500; rack-ends and thyroid ends can cost upwards of $5,000 each. Stabiliser bars and links can come up to about $10,000, while front wheel hubs, the “killer”, is another $15,000 each, “And those go like every week. Every week a man comes and says they want a front hub.”

Tire cost and repairs are other major issues facing motorists, Heron said, noting that recently he has had to purchase a tire for $10,500, and spent $13,000 at a rim repair shop in Kingston, to have it straightened. It is unwise, he said, for motorists to purchase and put on new tires if the affected rim is not repaired after potholes. That will only lead to the tire and other front-end parts wearing more quickly, he explained.

“If the government find it expensive to dig up all of the roads and fix them, they need to at least try to fix as many potholes as possible, as quickly as possible. But based on how I see they are just leaving the roads as they are, and the more the rain falls the more the problem persists,” he said, adding that huge potholes at the intersection of Chesterfield Drive and the Three Miles by-pass in Seaview Gardens is a disaster, especially since the stoplight there has been down for months.

“The traffic lights have been stuck on red and green lights for months now! How can you have stoplights, one saying red and one saying green, and people are just running the red and green lights at will, and nobody has come to fix the traffic lights? But, still the police would want to stop and give you a ticket for that.”

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com