Data provided by the Ministry of Infrastructure indicates that 27,000 vehicles daily traverse the Castries-Gros Islet Highway. The Ministry says it normally takes around 20 minutes to drive from the city to Gros Islet. Most commuters would disagree. Traffic tends to build up in some areas along the way, the stretch near Sandals Halcyon Hotel being one of them. Relief may be on the way. On Monday the Ministry officially broke ground on the Sandals Halcyon to Choc Roundabout Road Widening Project.
“The effort is to help with improving road safety along this stretch of road,” said Sherman Sylvester, civil engineer in the department of infrastructure. “It will involve the widening of the northbound lane between Sandals and Choc. The objective is to ensure we have a four-lane dual carriageway. What you notice happening at the Sandals intersection, where you have two lanes merging into one, will no longer be. Commuters will have that two-lane access that will eliminate the bottleneck where several accidents have occurred.”
The project is expected to take eight weeks to complete at a cost of $2.5 million. Sylvester says that there are plans to work on other roads, Choc Hill and the Marisule and Rodney Bay intersections among them, all aimed at reducing travel time on the highway.
C. O. Williams Construction will be implementing the project. The company’s contracts manager, Mr. Steve Brinkhurst, was on hand and spoke to reporters. “We’re here today to start putting up traffic and pedestrian safety measures and we start excavation work tomorrow,” he said. “The first phase of the works is building retaining walls and extending drainage, with little or no interference with the traffic movement. In the second phase, we’ll grind away existing asphalt and put new asphalt down. We’re planning to do those works in the night to minimize the traffic disruption.” Mr. Shanon La Bourne, communications officer in the Ministry of Infrastructure, expressed gratitude to Sandals for “contributing a significant portion of their property” in the interests of the project.
