Traffic congestion in major Hanover towns to be addressed soon
Published:Tuesday | January 17, 2023 | 12:30 AMBryan Miller/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Persistent traffic congestion in the Hanover towns of Hopewell and Lucea should soon be a thing of the past. This as both head of the parish’s division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), Sharon Beeput, and chairman of the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC), Sheridan Samuels, have vowed to remedy the situation for 2023.
Delivering his report at the January meeting of the HMC, Samuels gave the undertaking that dealing with the traffic congestion in the two major towns will be a priority.
“Traffic congestion in the towns of Hopewell and Lucea will be the major focus for the Hanover Municipal Corporation for 2023 as it seems as if Hopewell is even getting worse than Lucea now,” Samuels said.
“We (at the HMC) will not be waiting on the National Works Agency to do anything because if we wait on them we will get nothing done, and the problem is we are the ones that get blamed for everything,” he said.
Samuels said the HMC would also be looking to fast-track a meeting of the Traffic Management Committee to facilitate discussions on the matter.
The traffic management committee for the parish includes personnel from the JCF, the HMC, the Transport Authority, and the National Works Agency.
“We had proposed within our meeting that we are not really copying other parishes. But when you go to a parish and see things working well, you ought to use the knowledge coming from it,”he said.
“There are some rails that separate the pedestrians from the roadway itself in Montego Bay, we are going to adopt that,” Samuels stated.
He said a request had already been made in the HMC for an estimate to be prepared to install similar rails along the Willie Delisser Boulevard in Lucea and the Hopewell main road in that town’s square. He said that such a system would help in controlling pedestrian and motor traffic along the two thoroughfares.
“Persons who want to cross the road would have specific points from which to do so rather than doing so at any point,” he reasoned.
MORE POLICE PERSONNEL
For her part, SSP Beeput told the meeting that an assessment had been done of the traffic flow in both towns during the busy December period and decisions arrived at on ways to remedy the problems.
She said that there are plans to get the Hopewell Police Station up and running by the first quarter of the next financial year. This she said would allow for more police personnel to be available in the parish, and the town of Hopewell in particular, to properly monitor the situation.“Bear with us, the Hopewell Police station will be coming on board soon, and we will be more able to tend to the situation,” she argued, adding that it is hoped that more police traffic personnel would be in the space soon.
She further recommended specified delivery days for trucks in the two towns, proper road signage, and proper termination points for public passenger vehicles (PPV) that use the Hopewell space.
Beeput told The Gleaner in an interview that she would be initiating a meeting with the Transport Authority and the PPV operators in Hopewell in short order as the PPV operators now terminate in the town square, which causes severe traffic pile-up in that space.