Manchester custos urges business community to press for completion of traffic-management project
CUSTOS OF Manchester Garfield Green has urged members of the business community in the parish to use their influence to demand better service and press for a successful completion of t he Greater Mandeville Traffic Management project.
Green, who was a speaker at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet, held at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville recently, encouraged business interests to work together to ensure that the project is executed efficiently, and that disruptions are minimised.
“The traffic management project, though well-intentioned, has posed significant challenges for our community, impacting the flow of traffic and causing inconvenience to businesses and residents alike. And this is mainly due to the incompletion of the project, and some amount of tardiness,” Custos Green said.
New traffic changes took effect in Mandeville, Manchester, last December as part of a traffic improvement programme undertaken by the National Works Agency (NWA). According to Custos Green, the project had been in the making for a number of years; and had it not been for the advocacy of the member of parliament, it would still not have been implemented.
Custos Green indicated that during and since the execution and implementation, the project, has fell woefully short. Some of the challenges include traffic interruption during peak hours to execute work, incomplete work to include erection of no U-turn signs at both ends of the median by Manchester Shopping Centre/ KFC, a one-way to be implemented by Jamaica National (location) and another on a section of Manchester Ave.
“There have been missed timelines from July to September and finally to December without any explanation. Urgent work was being carried out on the day of the opening. It would have been so much better to have all work completed and just push a button on the day to declare the project commissioned,” Custos Green said.
CONTINUED DIALOGUE
The custos says that currently pedestrians experience some difficulty accessing one of the state-of-the-art pedestrian crossings, as the buttton to indicate when persons need to cross has been placed behind a chain link fence.
He says there is also the incomplete construction of two islands and the long-standing issue of scheduled delivery in the town to business places.
“As I travel along Hargreaves Avenue, it hurts me to see the state of some of the business places along that thoroughfare. Encourage your colleagues to paint the buildings. How beautiful it would be if we could beautify the median between Main Street and Hargreaves Avenue. There is a major business at one end of the dual carriageway. And I need not say more,” Custos Green said.
“I l ook forward to seeing our business l eaders engage in constructive dialogue on this matter. I am confident that together, we can overcome these challenges and continue to propel our parish toward a brighter and more prosperous future,” he said.
Simone Spence-Johnson, president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, says the Chamber shared the custos’ concern. She said her team was in dialogue with the National Works Agency, the member of parliament, and the Manchester Parish Council.
“We are awaiting responses from these entities to have continued dialogue because we are also frustrated. Most of us live in Manchester, and we traverse the roads daily, and we know what we are experiencing. As a Chamber, we also ask that as collective businesses ... that we use our voices to (help effect) the changes that are needed,” Spence-Johnson said.
Caledonia Road now functions as a one-way corridor from the direction of Scotiabank to the New Green Road intersection. The section of Manchester Road, between Scotiabank and Sinclair’s Bargain Centre, was converted into a one-way street.
Other changes through the Mandeville Traffic Management Improvement Plan include the opening of the median along Main Street to allow traffic from North Race Course Road and at Villa Road.
Traffic lights are in place at both intersections. Under the programme of works, which cost almost $75 million, the NWA also improved the intersections at Caledonia and Main Street, New Green Road and Caledonia Road, North Race Course Road and Caledonia Road, and South Race Course and Caledonia Road.
Pedestrian lights have also been erected at the entrance to the Mandeville Regional Hospital and the Mandeville Primary and Junior High schools.