MONTEGO BAY, St James — Commute-lengthening traffic snarls are expected to soon ease on a section of the heavily trafficked Fairfield Road, in the vicinity of Barnett Tech Park, now that $18.4-million traffic lights have been installed. The final step is for the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) to power them up.

The unruly behaviour of many drivers has contributed to traffic jams that sometimes go all the way back to the communities of Granville and Tucker. They have also raised safety concerns for people using Megabyte Drive to access Barnett Tech Park, which is owned by Barnett Limited.

“It was actually requested by some of our tenants that the traffic lights be put in because sometimes the taxi men — who are absolutely without any discipline, protocol, or manners — just go in and form like six or seven lines of traffic across it, each one trying jockey in front of the other,” explained Barnett Ltd’s Managing Director Mark Kerr-Jarrett.

Barnett Tech is a major hub for the business processing outsourcing (BPO) sector in St James and there are a number of other commercial enterprises there. Each day, thousands of people have to navigate the intersection as they enter and exit.

“In the mornings and the afternoons, when the shift changes, it’s absolute pandemonium there. There have been many accidents and people have almost been run over, so it’s a safety issue,” Kerr-Jarrett told the Jamaica Observer.

“People are trying to turn in and there are ones racing down from Fairfield and they come down that road at excessive speeds and somebody will try to turn and they just T-bone the people or they go head-on,” he added, his voice heavy with frustration.

He said he made the request, more than a year ago, to National Works Agency (NWA) for the signal to be installed. The agency did a traffic analysis which confirmed that the signal was needed and that it was sufficiently distanced from the nearest traffic light.

“When you have thousands of people coming to work at the same time, it’s a lot of traffic, and it can be a problem… I think it was $18 million to put in the light and we contributed $6 million to it,” Kerr-Jarrett told the Observer.

NWA Community Relations Manager for the Western Region Janel Ricketts said the lights will make a big difference in the area.

“It will help to regulate the flow of traffic, especially in terms of crossing movement. It is to increase safety at that particular intersection,” she said.

Kerr-Jarrett has expressed gratitude to the NWA, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, and Member of Parliament (MP) for St James West Central Marlene Malahoo Forte for “expediting” installation of the traffic light. He explained that the prime minister and the MP assisted in advocating for the lights to be installed after recognising the urgency of the situation.

“It’s just that the indiscipline of the taxi men is unimaginable, they’re without any consideration at all,” Kerr-Jarrett stressed.

“They don’t have the discipline to just wait in a line and realise that it will actually move faster than if you bundle everything up with this kind of boring and trying to jockey for position. That only creates further delays,” he said.

Once powered-up by Jamaica Public Service these traffic lights at the intersection of Fairfield Road and Megabyte Drive are expected to significantly ease congestion and improve safety on Fairfield Road..