Jamaica’s road infrastructure has long been a source of frustration and even satire, famously captured in Franklin McKnight’s 1978 Gleaner article, ‘Ministry of Pothole Construction’. Decades later, his critique remains relevant.

Our road network is long overdue for an overhaul, but only now, for the first time in 30 years, does the Government have the fiscal wherewithal to pursue it. My Administration has already begun this transformation, marking a new era in how we design, build, and maintain infrastructure.

LEGACY OF NEGLECT

The severe road deterioration of 2024 was brought on by the combined shock of extreme weather events — a prolonged dry season until May, record-high temperatures (March–November), and unprecedented rainfall (June–November). The drought shrank the soil underneath roads, increased heat produced more cracks in the asphalt, and heavy rains — 126 per cent above average in July (Hurricane Beryl) and 87 per cent in November (Tropical Storm Rafael) — accelerated damage. Unprecedented thermal and water impact on legacy roads, which were not designed for these unprecedented weather and climate events, compounded by historical lack of routine preventative maintenance in our infrastructure explains the general crisis of our road quality which confronted the nation last year. Not that it is of any comfort, but the same situation was experienced by many peer countries around the world. The case of Costa Rica is one that I have studied closely.

While road conditions are always a political issue easily seized upon by the Opposition, infrastructure failure doesn’t happen overnight. The pothole appearing today was a crack a few months ago; the breakaway started from uncontrolled water permeating the soil; the collapsed retaining wall began with undermined foundations and inverts. The lack of an adequate systematic routine maintenance programme to seal cracks, control water, and reinforce retaining walls is not a 2016 problem, as former Prime Minister P J Patterson seems to suggest. The accumulated impact of unattended natural wear and tear on aging infrastructure; the unrepaired damage caused by numerous hurricanes and other weather events; and the slow pace of upgrades, replacements, and rehabilitation is a long-standing problem across administrations due to the simple, undeniable fact that the economy could not provide the revenues to adequately maintain our infrastructure over the last three decades.

Good roads don’t fall from sky; they are only achieved by generating a capital budget with a sustainable growth-oriented development plan. Well-maintained roads are only achieved by generating a recurrent budget to adequately support the engineered lifespan of the infrastructure. There is no good road without a good economy! The inverse is also true.

While there are other factors to be considered for blame when dealing with road conditions, it cannot be denied, spun, or euphemised, those who wrecked our economy also wrecked our roads. For the better part of 30 years, fiscal mismanagement has led to systematic underinvestment in the country’s infrastructure. In the mid-1990s, the policies of the Patterson-led People’s National Party (PNP) Government precipitated a financial sector meltdown, resulting in the collapse of several financial institutions. The subsequent Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) bailout costed the Government 40 per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP). Prior to the crisis, our debt-to-GDP was 72 per cent; six years after Finsac our debt spiralled to 130 per cent. Interest costs alone on the debt consumed 60 per cent of tax revenues. Nothing was left over to invest in the country’s infrastructure. Today, under my Administration, the national debt will be below 70 per cent of GDP, down from 120 per cent when we took office. Interest costs as a percentage of tax revenue are now projected at 18.7 per cent, down from 33.6 per cent when we took office.

Those politicians who point fingers today about road conditions must acknowledge and own their part in destroying the economy which limited investment in infrastructure. They must be reminded how frustration over crumbling infrastructure sparked continual public unrest. It makes interesting research to go through the newspaper archives of the 1990s and 2000s and tally the almost monthly protests over road conditions all over the country compared to now.

In 1997, residents of Nonsuch, Portland, staged a march due to impassable roads, while protests in districts across St Ann and Hanover over deteriorating roads and lack of potable water lasted multiple days and led to clashes with the police. In response to the Hanover protests, Minister of Public Utilities, Transport and Energy Robert Pickersgill simply dismissed the residents as “damn stupid”. By 1998, roadblocks had become a near-daily occurrence; Portmore suffered in particular due to the increasing density of the town without concomitant road expansion. Protests seemed to reach a peak in October 2000 when hundreds of residents in western St Mary blocked roads in Gayle, Lucky Hill, and Halifax, demanding action on both poor road conditions and unpaid wages for roadwork.

Without the budget to fix the roads, the Patterson Administration sought to reorganise the bureaucracy of road management instead, through transitioning Jamaica’s Public Works Department (PWD) to the National Works Agency (NWA) in 2001. The downsized NWA was tasked with maintaining 5,000km of main roads and bridges (19 per cent of total roads), while parish councils were to maintain parochial and community roads. That has been the arrangement on paper. In reality, the NWA was never allocated sufficient resources to monitor and maintain its own roads, but was routinely called upon to assist local governments with patching theirs.

The new road regime did, seemingly, give Pickersgill enough confidence to proclaim in 2002 that Jamaica would be “pothole-free by 2003”. Whether or not he believed it, evidently Jamaicans knew better: Road protests continued throughout 2002 into 2003, often with chants of “No Road, No Vote”.

Over 18 and a half years in power, the PNP repeatedly mismanaged finances and failed to recognise that infrastructure quality is vital to economic health and citizens’ livelihoods.

It fell upon the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government to begin seriously addressing the problem in 2007, despite unsustainable debt and the 2008 global financial crisis, which pushed Jamaica to the brink of bankruptcy. To fund urgent road repairs, the Government made the tough decision to introduce a 20 per cent Special Consumption Tax on fuel, ensuring dedicated revenue for road improvements. That arrangement held until 2014, as the fuel tax revenue was absorbed into the consolidated fund for budgetary support. The Road Maintenance Fund was left with only $1.2 billion, representing revenue from vehicle licensing fees, at a time when the NWA estimated that $4 billion was needed for road maintenance.

A PHASED APPROACH

Since taking office in 2016, my Administration has operated on the guiding principle that prudent fiscal management is the prerequisite for the pursuit of economic growth and prosperity for all Jamaicans. We could also boast — as others once did — that “more man have car” now, but it’s far more satisfying to boast that the debt-to-GDP ratio will be below 70 per cent this year. It has taken us 30 years to undo the damage of the economic mismanagement of the 1990s and 2000s.

While prioritising debt reduction and avoiding tax hikes limited our ability to immediately reverse all the legacy ills from previous administrations, it has strengthened Jamaica’s ability to respond to shocks. Amid ongoing rainfall, we launched the Relief Emergency Assistance and Community Help (REACH) programme with $3 billion for road repairs, alongside a $2-billion emergency fund that enabled swift NWA repairs, providing critical relief to commuters and communities affected.

I respect Jamaicans’ intelligence too much to promise “all potholes will fix by 2026”, but our commitment to overhauling roads is evidenced by the SPARK (Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Road Network Improvement) programme, launched in 2024. This multi-year, $45-billion capital budget investment will upgrade 60 major roads and 600+ community roads — Jamaica’s largest-ever road infrastructure investment in both size and scope. SPARK prioritises climate-resilient, high-quality construction, reducing frequent fixes and disruptions. We are shifting from reactive road maintenance to proactive improvements, ensuring long-term resilience in the face of climate change.

Revamping roads alone will not meet modern Jamaica’s needs. Our road network, a colonial-era legacy, evolved to support an extractive plantation economy, with roads near coasts and rivers to transport sugar and bananas to ports. This outdated design makes roads vulnerable to rising sea levels, flooding, and storm surges, leading to closures and costly repairs. Thus, we are constructing new inland roads, including the Montego Bay and Port Antonio bypasses, to enhance resilience and ease traffic.

Within urban centres, we are exploring more flyovers, like the Three Miles overpass (2019), to improve mobility in major urban centres, and beginning the transition to a multi-modal transportation system. This is why we are heavily investing in the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC). In 2023, we made JUTC’s largest-ever bus acquisition — 100 buses — with 330+ new buses planned by 2026.

Challenges like climate change, aging infrastructure, and increased road usage demand bold action. Through fiscal discipline and strategic investments in infrastructure, we are pursuing increased productivity, access, safety, and mobility for all. My Administration is committed to lasting solutions that withstand time and weather. Together, we are paving not just roads but a new era of prosperity, connectivity, and sustainability.