In just over a month, roadworks for Highway One should commence.
Expressing hopes there would be a start to the project in four to five
weeks, Minister of Transport, Works and Maintenance Dr. William Duguid
stated efforts will be put in place to mitigate the serious disruption
of the long overdue work.
“What it is, is that we have to change out all of the water mains on
Highway One and that will mean water mains on both sides of the road.
We will be digging a trench on Highway One from the bottom of
University Hill to Holders Hill– that is one section – and then the
second section will be Holder’s Hill to Holetown. These will be going
on simultaneously and because of that we recognise that there would be
significant road disruption and the travelling public would be
impacted, but we are going to do as much traffic mitigation as we can
to minimise the effects,” he said.
Speaking to members of the media on Monday morning at the construction
of a slip lane at Upper Rendezvous Road, Duguid said the relevant
utility companies will also be involved in improving the water,
natural gas and electricity infrastructure.
“Current piping from the Barbados Water Authority on Highway One is
very old and causes lots of leaks. The worst thing that can happen is
that we fix the road and then within weeks the BWA is back digging it
up again to fix a leak. So we made a decision to do all of the utility
infrastructure one time and then fix the road so it will last as long
as possible.”
He said with the completion of this project, which should take “a few
months”, work would begin on Highway Seven.
“We will use the opportunity of changing the water mains to put in the
natural gas and improve the natural gas structure as well, and we are
going to put the ducts in available for Light and Power as well. So it
is a massive project the ministry is looking to undertake, starting
with Highway One and then moving over to Highway Seven,” he said.
(JMB)