MINISTER without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for Works C Everald Warmington says several roads are earmarked for upgrade and improvement under the new Special Infrastructure Programme.

“We have developed a programme to look at some special-project infrastructure to relieve the congestion we have in several parts of the Corporate Area in particular, and some of the rural sections, and we are hoping to get the funds necessary to get this going, because we think it is very important,” Minister Warmington said in a JIS interview. The programme, he said, is expected to begin in the 2021/2022 financial year.

“It is designed for fast implementation to boost economic growth, creating additional employment and increased workforce production by reducing time lost in traffic and improving connectivity between major commercial centres,” Warmington said.

The minister said the portfolio comprises eight projects, based on the need to address recurrent congestion, highway operating costs and safety for motorists and pedestrians, and provide water supply and sewer facilities. The project will include road construction and sewer and water mains throughout.

“We will be looking at widening the Braeton and Hellshire main roads in St Catherine and we want to dualise Braeton Parkway and Grange Lane, which are also in St Catherine,” Warmington pointed out.

He added that under the programme, East Kings House Road would also be dualised straight through to Lady Musgrave and on to Trafalgar Road.

This, the minister said, should assist with alleviating the congestion that is experienced along the East Kings House and Lady Musgrave corridors during morning and afternoon peak hour traffic.

“We are looking also at widening Arthur Wint Drive into a four-lane highway,” he noted, further.

The minister pointed out that under the project, a section of the road in Mineral Heights, Clarendon, and the North Coast Highway from Negril to Montego Bay, would undergo mill and overlay, which is a process of grinding off the top layer of existing asphalt pavement by means of a large milling machine and replacing this layer with a new hot-mix asphalt riding surface.

He also pointed out that there are plans for extension of Barbican Road to Grants Pen and expressed the intention to widen the bridge at the Grants Pen and Barbican Road intersection to take four lanes of traffic heading there from the newly expanded corridor.

In addition, the minister said the bridge at Sandy Gully, in the vicinity of the Church of the Open Bible, has been earmarked for completion. It will cost about $160 million to construct the bridge, which he explained is necessary to eliminate the bottleneck that exists on Washington Boulevard, at the Patrick City intersection where three lanes of traffic must merge into two to traverse the bridge before widening back to three lanes.