North-east Highway Under Study

Fourteen years after the idea was first mooted a highway linking the northern part of the island to its eastern side has taken a big stride towards becoming a reality. This follows a recent official signing ceremony for the feasibility study of the project.

The ceremony was held in the conference room of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Port Services last week.

The signatures to the contract were those of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Alison Gajadhar and Tom Mercer of Stantec Consulting International Limited, the company that won the bid for the study.

The company has been given a time frame of eight months in which to complete its work, something Mercer seems to have no trouble with stating that his company is in 200 locations worldwide and comprising individuals working in areas like transportation, building, energy and resource, project management and infrastructure.

He gave his company’s presence here a local flavour by saying that his people are active members of whichever community they are in and that they believe in staying true to local values.

Stantec will be partnering with local firms in its undertaking which has a price tag of US$370,000 some of that money, US$150,000 coming from the Caribbean Development Bank and the rest coming from the Government of Saint Lucia.

The study will be broad in its undertaking meaning that it will not look solely at only one route for the link road but several possible routes that link the north to the east and the economic possibilities for residents in communities bordering the route.

This link road will enable commuters from north and south of the island and vice versa to shorten their travel time significantly hereby creating opportunities for increased trade between the two points, quicker Hewanorra Airport pick-ups and drop-offs, less travel fatigue when travelling from either end of the island, etc.

Construction of this new road has since spoken of from around 2000, chiefly as a bypass to the Bexon Highway and the Barre-de-lisle, thoroughfares that pose tremendous problems for motorists in times of heavy non-stop rains, troughs and hurricanes.

Many times over the years weather conditions have blocked those roads either through swollen rivers that burst their banks drowning out roads and homes, as in Bexon and fallen trees, landslides, and the forming of deep fissures in the road as in the Barre-de-lisle.

In 2001 an effort was made to get the project going when a feasibility study was commissioned and completed by Dewi Consults, which presented several options for alleviating the problems and challenges that adversely impacted on travel time between the two ends of the island.

However the Stantec study is expected to take several factors into consideration including disaster reduction and climate resilience, according to Simon Daniel of the Ministry of Infrastructure.

Albert Jn. Baptiste, the Ministry of Infrastructure’s Chief Engineer spoke of the bidding for the feasibility study as being one of a highly competitive nature stating that “the Government of Saint Lucia and the CDB undertook a competitive tendering exercise in which all the rigours of procurement required by the CDB were adhered too. And out of this we came up with the best evaluated bidder for undertaking the study.”