The closure of the Rio Cobre gorge over the past week because of the huge landslips caused by the rains associated with Hurricane Wilma appears, finally, to be concentrating official minds on an issue that has been a bugbear of this newspaper for years.

It has bothered us that the main route between Jamaica's two main economic centres, the capital, Kingston, on the south coast, and the tourism towns on the north shore, comes down to a single lane over a stone bridge built before those two English incompetents, Penn and Venables, bungled their way through the capture of Jamaica.

It doesn't say much for the Spanish colonists who were in charge at the time to have been frightened off the island by these two bumbling, minor footnotes of history.

It does say much, however, for Spanish engineering, or for our inability, that after four centuries not only is their bridge over the Rio Cobre still very much in use, but that there has been so much discussion about whether there can be a suitable alternative.

The issue, on the basis of the evidence, needs to move beyond the dithering to the urgent implementation of the alternative to the Flat Bridge and the gorge that is now on the table.

Ironically, when Penn and Venables came to Jamaica and the Spanish got cold feet, the Englishmen had just hustled out of St Dominique, the French colony that was to become Haiti. It is the French company Bouygues' plan for a spur from Bushy Park, St Catherine, to Ocho Rios, to Highway 2000 that now offers the most exciting, and seemingly feasible, alternative to the Flat Bridge and gorge.

Highway 2000 is a tolled road and the Bushy Park/Ocho Rios segment has been proposed under the same build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) principle by which Bouygues is developing the motorway.

There will of course be residual questions about whether the alternative would be a tolled road. There are those who will balk at having to pay for its use.

Our first response is that to maintain what exists is economic nonsense, debilitating to the development of a modern state where adequate communication is important. Moreover, as the frequent landslides and tragedies in the Rio Cobre during heavy rains continue to prove, it is also downright dangerous.

Second, there is now an alternative to the gorge and flat bridge to the north coast, via Sligoville. That can be upgraded.

Third, if the government believes that it is politically difficult to close the gorge and have a tolled road as the primary route between the country's key economic centres, then it can undertake the development as part of the state's infrastructure works. We are sure that the capital can be arranged.

There is the issue of the use to which the gorge ought to be put in the event of its closure. It perhaps can be left as a kind of sanctuary and tourist attraction: a sort of historic curio.
We, however, believe that the better idea is the one that we have promoted in the past, which the works minister, Mr Pickersgill, is now saying is worthy of consideration. The gorge should be dammed, which would allow for the better management of the waters of the Rio Cobre and the feeding of an increasingly thirsty Greater Kingston. Perhaps, too, it could generate a kilowatt or two of hydro energy.

There is a clear need to act with urgency on these matters.

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