The government is moving ahead with plans to widen Highway 2A – the Ronald Mapp Highway – to four lanes as part of its wider effort to ease traffic congestion across the island, Minister of Transport and Works Kirk Humphrey revealed.
The 12-kilometre stretch, which has over the last four decades emerged as the second-busiest northern corridor, running parallel to the coastal Highway One runs from D’Arcy Scott Roundabout, Warrens, St Michael in the south to Mile‑and‑a‑Quarter, St Peter, also traversing St Thomas and St James. Except for a four-lane dual carriageway from Warrens to the Redman’s Village/Bagatelle junction, the highway has remained largely a two-lane artery.
Speaking on the sidelines of his St Michael South constituency branch’s annual general meeting on Sunday, he explained that existing bridge designs had to be revised to accommodate the expansion.
Humphrey said: “Highway 2A has seven bridges running underneath it. To be able to widen that road, you obviously have to do the bridge work. The ministry had already engaged on four of the bridges to be able to do some work, but they hadn’t accommodated for the expansion. We’re now in the process of reviewing and redesigning the bridge drawings to the seven bridges.”
The government is awaiting the revised drawings for all seven bridges, while paving continues along Highway 2A towards Lancaster, St James, he said.
“It’s our intention to go for four lanes on that highway and to start our work as soon as possible. Between the designing of the bridges and the design for the road, because people must understand that you have to design the road, you don’t just build a road, so that work should start very soon as well.”
Turning to several road improvement projects across the island undergone since he took office in February, Humphrey said works had already been completed in Thorpes Cottage and Newbury, St George.
In St Lucy, the extensive project to install new water mains will require a separate road rehabilitation programme:
“St Lucy has seen the most development in terms of water infrastructure in the history of our Barbados. We’ve done about 20 kilometres of new pipe at millions of dollars in St. Lucy, but the unfortunate thing is that once you lay pipe, you’re disturbing the road, so we have to go back and do a number of those roads as well. But we’ve already started that.”
The ministry has also begun another phase of its pothole repair programme:
“There’s a pothole programme that we just finished, and that we’re rolling out already. You will see Infra and C O Williams. We contracted them to do a number of the potholes and a number of the reinstatements. A lot of the work has already started. I think we’ve had INFRA in the south and C O W in the north doing a lot of that work as well.”
The transport and works ministry is also working to address the long-standing issue of raised and sunken manholes, he said.
“There’s a manhole project I’m working on to bring those manholes to the level of the road, so that people don’t have that inconvenience.”
He encouraged Barbadians to use the new Pearly app and other channels to report potholes and road concernsL
“Use the Pearly app or any other source to be able to just let us know where the areas of concern are, and I’ve been trying to respond to people when they message me. I try to send somebody to do the work, when they call me, when I see on Instagram, I try to respond, but we also have to be strategic, you know, you can’t just be ad hoc, so we have a strategic pothole plan in place.”
Humphrey also acknowledged that the Ministry of Transport and Works needs to do a better job of keeping the public informed about ongoing projects and delays.
“What I have to do is just communicate to the public a little bit better about where we’re going, when there are delays, why there are delays, and so on, so that the public is not caught off guard.”
(LG)
