Dear Editor,

The north-south link of Highway 2000, that was expected to facilitate fuss-free, time-saving travel between Jamaica’s major economic and population centres, could well fall short of its earning targets for the foreseeable future.

The toll authority, in the latest increase in rates, not only clawed back the 25 per cent temporary concession, but also tacked on more on the revised total.

Of course, aspects of the economics to which the toll rates arrangement is wedded are somewhat strange. This is compounded by the fact that the traffic uptake is low. So they significantly increase toll rates.

In a news report on an August 8, 2016 crash that shut down the road through Bog Walk Gorge for hours, one man interviewed on location referred to the woeful state of the route via Barry. A second man cited the high toll rates on the north-south link that made it an unattractive route: He said that when 300 to 400 vehicles pass through the gorge the tolled highway sees only four because of the cost. He pointed to his head and concluded: “Dem not smart.”

Well, there is more to the rates than being ‘not smart’. As early as March, after travelling on the highway on the day when the gates were being tested, I had called up the National Road Operating and Construction Company (NROCC) office and pointed to the benefits of substantially reduced rates, but the reception to that intervention was at best lukewarm. Over time, too, media reports recorded public dissatisfaction at the high rates and the prime minister and works minister emerged in media reports with the useful but inadequate 25 per cent concession, while the leader of the Opposition called for “reasonable” rates.

My suggestion is that the core power brokers on the institutional side of the issue – Jamaica North South Highway Company (developers), China Harbour Engineering Company (contractors) and the Government’s NROCC — urgently sit and work to massively reduce — by about half — the rates that prevailed during the concessionary period. Such a reduction in rates is unlikely to inspire the traffic snarl spanning the length of south- and north-bound lanes within 24 hours, but the interested parties would be pleasantly surprised by the end of a month, or in a few weeks. Such is the power of realistically set rates.

The output would reflect corporate sensitivity, contribution to checking the potential of an inflationary spiral, and a remodelled arrangement that functions to the mutual benefit of the nation and, yes, investors.

Paul E Martin

Manning’s Hill District

paulimartie@yahoo.com