Friday, January 4 2008

WORKS and Transport Minister Colm Imbert hinted at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall that Government will consider new measures in 2008 to reduce the number of cars on the nation’s roads as it continues to grapple with the daily traffic congestion faced by the population.

After announcing the approval of $450 million in supplementary funding for the continuation of the Programme for Upgrading Road Efficiency (PURE) for the first nine months of this year, Imbert recalled that Government previously introduced a phased reduction of the quota of foreign-used cars in the country and said this had to be reviewed.

“I can assure you that the Ministry of Works and Transport is looking at this very seriously because there are far too many cars on the road in Trinidad and Tobago. Just like any other country in the world, we will have to look at measures to reduce the number of cars,” he stated.

Listing the successes of PURE from its inception from 2002 to 2007, Imbert said the number of good roads in the country had increased from 48 to 67 percent while the number of bad roads had fallen from 28 to 18 percent over this period. He said PURE was also responsible for the upgrade of over 600 kilometres of roads, the construction of seven bridges and three pedestrian overpasses and the correction of 70 landslips last year.

Imbert added that the additional funding for PURE would be used to continue upgrades of the Churchill Roosevelt, Uriah Butler and Beetham Highways during the course of the year and “paving the way” for the establishment of a Roads Authority that will be responsible for all roads in the country.

The minister said arrangements to purchase four vessels for this country’s new water taxi system from a company in New Jersey, is taking longer than planned but he was optimistic that this transaction would be settled “within the next week or so.”