A report aimed at combatting the traffic bottlenecks at Grand Harbour includes a recommendation to build a new road to take pressure off the roundabout that is the scene of long daily tailbacks.
Jay Ebanks, whose remit now includes transport after the recent Cabinet reshuffle, spoke about the report at a public meeting in Bodden Town East, hosted by the district’s MP Dwayne Seymour on Thursday night.
“Our biggest bottleneck right now is Grand Harbour,” he said at the meeting at which traffic congestion was a subject touched on by most of the government speakers.
Ebanks said the report, which he received from the National Roads Authority on Wednesday and which has not yet been released publicly, indicated five options to ease the traffic jams in the area, and he outlined one of these.
“One of the biggest fixes for Grand Harbour [is] to put the public on a service road to alleviate some of the traffic flow that is coming from the Marina Drive, Prospect, area, and [for] those that want to get in behind the Grand Harbour area,” he said. “So, there will be a new road going behind King’s and … behind Country and Western [bar]… which will end up all the way down in Prospect.”
This would take much of the traffic-flow pressure off the roundabout, which would at that point only be handling traffic coming from two directions, he said.
NRA director Edward Howard confirmed to the Compass that the ‘corridor study’ report was on the agenda for discussion at an NRA board meeting next week, after which he would seek authorisation from the minister to release it to the public.
During the meeting in Bodden Town, Ebanks also outlined work being carried out by the NRA to deal with congestion in other areas.
Addressing the expansion work at the Linford Pierson Highway, he said the plan was to create a six-lane highway on that road, and “changing the roundabout direction”, as well as enabling traffic on the roundabout to access Walkers Road.
“That will really help alleviate a lot of the morning traffic,” he said.
Work is also continuing on the Airport Connector Road, which will establish a direct route from the Owen Roberts International Airport to Camana Bay.
“That will alleviate a lot of the traffic flow in central George Town [and] in the industrial area, and alleviate the traffic flow coming from the airport for those going to West Bay Road,” he said.
Ebanks also addressed some Bodden Town upgrades, including the repaving of Belford Drive, and adding more wells in Cumber Avenue – a site that experiences severe flooding during the rainy season.
“We did some work in digging out the water flow whereby the culverts that go to the ponds are a bit deeper so the water can flow out there,” he said. “I know we haven’t had a large rain yet so that we can see if it’s going to be working effectively, but we’re hoping that will alleviate a lot of the water flow that’s happening in Cumber.
“If it does not, then there’s another option [of putting in] injection wells in that area that will force the water to get out of Cumber very quickly.”
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