The concept of a tolled highway network linking capital city Kingston with Montego Bay, Manchester and Ocho Rios was first announced by the Prime Minister P J Patterson at an annual conference of his then ruling People’s National Party.

It was, many agree, an ambitious project that would be very costly. But Patterson and his close confidante, Kingsley Thomas, had already worked out how the first phase of the highway would be funded.

French construction and engineering company Bouygues was contracted and granted a 35-year concession to build, own and operate the first phase, for which Bouygues would raise most of the money itself.

When he broke ground on April 10, 2002 for the US$400-million first phase — an 81-kilometre toll road between Kingston and Williamsfield, Manchester — Patterson estimated that the project would cause the creation of at least 50,000 jobs over three years.

In the longer term, with the expansion of the road to Montego Bay, and with a branch to Kingston, it was expected that job creation could reach up to 120,000, Patterson said.

“The direct impact of the highway, as well as the impact of increased consumption, due to rising output and incomes, show that employment creation should result in over 50,000 jobs in the medium-term — that is, 2002-2004, and potentially 120,000 in the long-term,” Patterson said at the ceremony at Bushy Park, St Catherine.

Although Bouygues was mandated to raise most of the money for the project, the National Road Operating and Constructing Company (NROCC), the vehicle used by the Government to oversee the project, had raised the equivalent of US$107 million on the local market, which it on-lent to Bouygues on a commercial basis.

At the time, Patterson did not provide the specifics of the Government’s analysis for job creation, but his administration had consistently argued that the road would lead to a substantial opening of Jamaica’s south coast to investment.

At the ground-breaking, the prime minister likened the highway’s potential impact to the “early days of the railway”.

Apart from providing a catalyst for industry and agriculture, the Government said that the road, as it is expanded, would allow for the development of a number of projects it had earmarked for the region. These include:

* upgrading of the Milk River Spa;

* the construction of major industrial parks along the highway corridor;

* a Maroon theme park in the Cockpit Country;

* the development of Vernamfield in Clarendon as a maintenance and cargo airport and free zone; and

* the building of New Town in Clarendon on 11,500 acres of land in the Inverness, Hunt’s Pen and Collman Cockpit areas.

The first element of the Highway 2000 project was broken into discreet phases with the first phase scheduled to be completed over a two-and-half-year period to include the construction of a new six-lane bridge across the Kingston harbour, linking Kingston and Portmore. It also included the improvement and expansion to the Dyke Road in Portmore.