Arrest the Mandela Highway traffic

THERE ARE no decent ways of expressing the traffic situation on the Mandela Highway in the mornings. To put it in the most Christianlike way – it is a test of sanity.

Leaving early or late equals late. Travelling straight along Mandela Highway or joining via the toll yields the same result: wasting of precious time.

It is well and good that you have to go through two or three state of emergency check points that at times seem like a joke, but the Mandela traffic has been ‘hor-ri-ble!’ for want of a better word.

The traffic backs up on the toll, starting before the last overhead bridge and takes you to as far as Six Miles. What enhances the disgust is that the traffic is caused by disabled vehicles or a minor accident rendering that area into single-lane traffic in the peak hours.

There are no alternative, as the traffic at the Portmore toll begin just after exiting the toll booth and continues to Three Miles in the north or downtown Kingston in the east.

Is time really money? Does the Government make the correlation between traffic and an escalating oil bill? Where are the accident contingency plans until the roadworks end?

There are presently no soft shoulders between the toll exit and the entrance to Plantation Heights. This has been a major source of increased traffic if there is a fender bender.

How about three lanes easterly and one westerly in the mornings and the reverse in the evenings. Even if it is just to run off really bad traffic in the mornings or evenings, similar to what the Jamaica Urban Transit Company used to enjoy. Standing in two hours of traffic in a full bus is in no way productive and is a total waste of time!