SAINT LUCIA is blessed.
At every turn, we seem to have two of everything. Not one, but two Pitons. Other than Trinidad, no country in the Caribbean has managed to produce a Nobel laureate, but somehow, we’ve produced not one, but two.
We have two airports; one in the north, and one in the south. We’re building not one, but two brand new, first class, state of the art hospitals; one for the north, the other for the south. Now we hear that we’re going to be building, not one, but two four-lane highways from Castries to Gros Islet. Except that the government hasn’t quite said this as yet.
What we have heard from government is that a US$18 million loan has been secured to enable the expansion of the Choc to Gros-Islet road from its existing two lanes to four. We double everything. The total works are expected to cost EC$150 Million.
Many have pointed out the folly of this proposal, former Chief Engineer John Peters in his column in this newspaper singling out one of the bottlenecks on this road and its effect on travel time to Castries; address the Corinth bottleneck and the congestion problem is largely solved he suggests. No one listens, as this solution doubles nothing.
Not only that, but having doubled its width, we now have to construct walkovers so that pedestrians don’t get killed attempting to cross this widened road. Nine are currently proposed. There’s one extra; doubling two twice should give us eight.
We are also told that we need this four-lane highway to Gros Islet as traffic during the peak hours in the morning and afternoon makes travel at these times inconvenient. No other traffic management solution will do.
It does not matter that one of the Ministry of Infrastructure’s engineers, when describing the reconstruction of the failed culvert in the Rodney Bay area also let it be known that the Ministry had done a preliminary design for a roundabout at the Rodney Bay junction, but that this now awaited final approval from the consultants for the four-lane highway.
We have a solution for half of the problem in hand, designed by Saint Lucians whom we have educated and trained, and now employ and pay. What can go wrong with the construction of this roundabout? It’s low cost, it’s guaranteed not to fall down, and if not a perfect solution for traffic flow at this junction it would at least allow a solution to evolve.
But four lanes it is to be. The public who will have to pay for this know little about it other than its proposed width, and that some widening of the alternate routes to Castries will have to be undertaken in order to allow its construction. No one in government thinks it appropriate to allow the public the least glimpse into the technical study for this road, nor a look at the economic study which would justify the borrowing of this huge sum of money.
And at the end of it, no one thinks it at all necessary to explain just what is to happen with this new stream of free-flowing four-lane traffic when it gets to the junction with Jeremie Street in Castries on mornings.
Because if all of this traffic cannot go through this junction at the same speed that it is travelling down this four-lane highway, all we are really building is a four-lane parking lot. It may take a couple of years before the parking lot is full to capacity and the problem which is now supposedly being solved resurfaces, but that can be the only result.
Which is why news that government was seriously considering the construction of the new Dennery to Gros Islet highway brought great relief. We’ve heard from the Prime Minister that it was one reason that he wanted a fourth term in office.
Welcome news. We know that a report on this project became available towards the end of last year, and we are told that a feasibility study is soon to be completed. It would be an even greater thrill if we were to hear that these documents have become available for inspection on some government web site so that the public could have an opportunity to buy-in to the project and its probable expenditure.
As far as we are aware, the proposed Dennery to Gros-Islet highway had as its principal objective a decrease in transit time for tourists travelling from Hewanorra Airport to Gros Islet, the location of most of our tourism plant. Achieving this first meant an alternative route to the Barre de l’isle, with this not only considered from the point of reduction in travel time, but also from the need to improve security of the roadway in times of natural disaster.
Having cleared the Barre de l’isle hurdle, it then remained for the proposed highway to avoid the congestion north of that ridge and proceed to Gros-Islet.
With the above objectives in mind, the lay person can be forgiven for thinking that a new four-lane highway constructed from Dennery to Gros Islet which passed somewhere to the east of Castries would include a link to the capital city. Not only is this logical, but in the event that phasing of the project needed to be considered from a financing standpoint, the sensitive leg from Dennery to Castries could be constructed first.
However the highway is designed and constructed, it cannot simply bypass the capital city. Some provision has to be made somewhere for traffic originating south of Gros Islet to access this highway. And so, at some point, we are going to have a four-lane highway between Castries and Gros Islet on some alignment east of the existing coastal road.
So, seeing as how we double everything, we are currently in the process of designing a four-lane highway from Choc to Gros Islet while at the same time we are conducting a feasibility study on the construction of an alternative four-lane highway to the east of this one. According to our Prime Minister, we are going to build both.
While the idea of two four-lane highways may meet approval from some sections of our community, the problem is that we don’t have a cent of our own money with which to build either of them. Every dollar spent on the construction of these roads will have to be borrowed, forcing our Debt to GDP ratio, already high and climbing, to unsustainable levels.
Not only that, but if we can commit to spending $150 million on a convenience issue when there are obvious low cost alternatives, what gives the international lending community any confidence that we will manage our affairs in a way that will allow us to service our new debts? We seem to know how to spend money, not how to earn or manage it.
Even when the Prime Minister indicates that he is expecting a grant from the UK government of £12 million for this road, we will be lucky if this sum covers land acquisition costs and engineering design fees. We will have to borrow for the construction of every mile of this highway, in addition to the EC$150 million that we now propose to borrow for widening of the existing road.
Meanwhile, we cannot finish the construction of either of the two new hospitals, and have to seek external aid for staffing them. The best-kept secret of all may be how we propose to pay for the maintainance of the buildings and the equipment in these high-tech facilities after they are opened.
But, we are currently proposing two four-lane highways, with two mega-sized loans attached to them.
Seeing double is one thing. But paying double too? And how come we only have one mental hospital?