THE Portmore Municipal Council is lobbying for three sets of traffic lights to be installed on the recently upgraded Passagefort Drive, where two children on their way to school were hit by a motor vehicle almost two weeks ago.

The Caymanas police reported the students, both girls, were coming from Augusta Drive when a motor vehicle coming from the direction of Cumberland stopped to allow them to cross. However, a vehicle that was travelling behind the one that had stopped overtook it and hit the children. The two received injuries mainly to the feet and hands and were taken to the Kingston Public Hospital where they were treated.

According to the municipal council, it is to guard against incidents such as these that it has requested that traffic lights be installed along the road, which was upgraded from two to four lanes.

At the council’s general meeting at it’s Portmore Pines offices Wednesday night, councillor for the Independence City Division, Keith Blake, said he wanted lights to be installed at the intersections with Waterford, Knutsford Drive at the entrance to Caymanas Track, and Augusta Drive, the entrance to Independence City.

“The road is built up and it is used almost as a highway because it leads directly to the toll road. The vehicles travelling on it (do so) at enormous speeds and it is a bit hard for pedestrians because they are used to it being two lanes rather than four,” Blake told the Observer.

But the company responsible for infrastructural work on main roads in the country, the National Works Agency (NWA) said the council could only get one set of lights based on the length of the road and the fact that as many as three sets would serve to hinder the flow of traffic rather than ensure that it flows freely.

Communications and customer service manager at the NWA, Stephen Shaw, told the Observer that while no definite timeline had yet been set for the completion of the work, the process had already begun.

“The infrastructure work has already been done,” Shaw said, noting that French public works firm Bouygues Travaux Publics had done the preparatory works on behalf of the National Road Operating and Constructing Company (NROCC).

“We’ll be going to tender very soon. It will be done as part of the thrust that we have to signalise intersections in the Corporate Area and selected communities outside of the Corporate Area,” Shaw added.

In addition to the traffic lights, Councillor Blake said the council was seeking to have reflectors affixed to the concrete dividing median that was erected when the roadway was upgraded early last year because it posed a threat to motorists travelling at night.