Traffic Lights in Saint Lucia to be reinstalled- Infrastructure Minister King

Declaring that “a life lost is too many,” Infrastructure Minister Stephenson King at last week’s House of Assembly sitting, provided insight into his department’s efforts towards improving road safety in Saint Lucia. Ever since joining the department, King said he has insisted that building infrastructure without taking care of the safety of people is unacceptable.

He said that on March 14 2019, the department launched an island-wide road safety assessment project called IRAR — intended to determine what interventions are necessary to deliver safer roads in Saint Lucia. The initiative is financed by the United Kingdom government, through the department of International Development. The minister revealed that a report has been completed which star-rated/ categorized each road in the country based on many factors including pedestrian safety, sidewalks, guardrails, separations and signage. He said that the report has provided good recommendations for improvements in road safety and the level of investment required to take the country to the international safety standards.

“As a consequence of that, we have seen more and more improvements taking place on our roads. The initiative enhanced all edge and center lines, all lane and directional arrows, all hatch lines and pedestrian crossings. The aim was to improve road safety for all communities.”

King said that in the last financial year, over 166 signs were installed islandwide. Signs installed by district are: Castries City,6 ; Soufriere, 35; Gros Islet, 6; Vieux Fort, 3; Babonneau, 3; Laborie, 9; Castries-Gros Islet highway, 31; East Coast highway, 18; West Coast road, 13; school zones, 41. King stated that 49.4 metres of guardrails were installed for in the last financial year and 31.4 metres repaired. An additional 817 metres of guardrails were procured and this project will continue, he said.

Addressing the lack of functioning traffic lights in Saint Lucia, the minister stated that the ministry procured four traffic light units in 2019/2020 —two of which were funded under the OECS Tourism Competitiveness project. “We await the current situation with air travel to improve to allow the suppliers to arrive on island to install, train and activate the systems. For some time now the ministry has been waiting on that project… and finally we were able to get some resources under the project to be able to improve the traffic lighting system within the city.”

King said that the first unit will be reinstalled in the corner of Bridge Street and Jeremie Street, and the corner of Jeremie Street and John Compton Highway. Other systems will be installed “at Sans Souci, Vieux Fort and at other intersections within the city of Castries.”