Fix Half-Way Tree once and for all

IT APPEARS that those who were tasked with forecasting the infrastructure that would be needed to satisfy the demands of a fast-growing commercial space such as HalfWay Tree drooled and snored as they slept on the job.

The Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA), under which governments control and guide the use of land along with the processes of change in the environment, was passed in Jamaica in 1958. The TCPA, which is based on England’s Town and Planning Act of 1947, effectively acknowledges the dynamic nature of the planning process, anticipates the changing needs of citizens, and then authorises residential, industrial, and commercial developments to meet new social and economic expectations.

As I’ve written in these pages before, HalfWay Tree is one of the most chaotic places in this country. The problems are so institutionalised that the high number of police personnel deployed there daily is incapable of establishing order and enforcing the rule of law. Among the biggest problems in the area is the absence of an adequate facility for taxis and non-JUTC buses to set down and pick up passengers.

At any point in the day, taxis descend upon Half-Way Tree like ants on Cheese Trix, stopping in front of Jamaica National, beside National Commercial Bank, beside the Burger King drive-through, across from the western entrance to Pavilion Mall, and, most inconveniently of all, in the vicinity of Mandela Park, and along South Odeon Avenue, to pick up or set down passengers.

Additionally, because commuters are congregating in these areas to chase taxis or buses to get to places like Mannings Hill/Red Hills Road/Whitehall, Papine/Campus, Portmore, downtown Kingston and Spanish Town, additional congestion is created as other road users have to slow to navigate the bodies spilling on to the streets.

The authorities would be wise to knock down Mandela Park and transform the space into a taxi and bus centre. I know it’s a green space, and that it’s named eponymously for one of the world’s greatest-ever citizens. But for years, Mandela Park has been more of a disgrace to the name of such a legendary figure than anything else.

BUILDING FOR PRACTICALITY

The facility I am proposing would not be bereft of trees and could still be a green space. Indeed, it could still bear the name of the legendary freedom fighter and be called the Mandela Park Transport Centre. It would make practical sense to build this facility for several reasons. The steady growth in the business process outsourcing sector has led to the development of 58HWT Technology Park. That facility, at maximum employment, will accommodate 8,800 people, the majority of whom don’t own a car. They will need public transport and, likely, will attract even more taxi and bus operators to Half-Way Tree to satisfy this need.

The Mandela Park Transport Centre would, perhaps, help to make policing easier by allowing law enforcers to focus on one large facility rather than be stretched to cover several points where hundreds of commuters converge in the evenings to get transportation to go home. The new facility will prevent taxi operators from ‘running the road’ and causing traffic build-up, especially in the evenings, thereby easing the pollution caused by the heavy concentration of vehicles using Half-Way Tree in the evenings.

Some policemen avoid prosecuting lawbreaking taxi and bus operators because they reason to themselves and realise the futility of asking for compliance from an operator who has been sold a road licence by a Government that, in turn, fails to give said operator adequate space to operate.

The new facility will eliminate the excuse that passengers have to be set down or picked up arbitrarily because the small taxi stand is full. Town and planning authorities were supposed to have looked at Half-Way Tree decades ago and anticipated this problem. They did not. Now it demands a major fix. We can repurpose Mandela Park and not feel guilty when we hear the words of Joni Mitchell’s 1970 hit ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”.

Selah.