Guardian ( Trinidad and Tobago )
04 September 2023 ( Page 12 )
Utilise highway extension for expansion into non-energy production
It has been a “long and winding road” for people, desirous of transporting
themselves and business operations between San Fernando and Point
Fortin in an efficient manner, to experience an accommodating highway
passage between these two major industrial, business, and residential
areas of the country.
Even if today’s opening has limitations, as traffic will still be restricted to
one side of the highway both ways, it will still be a particular relief for
students going back out to their classes.
They and others will surely be relieved that they will not have to spend
long hours on the road in congested traffic, wishing there was some other
turn-off for the driver to take.
The fall in the levels of productivity because of the traffic jams, the
impacts of the stress and the absolute frustration that interminable traffic
jams have caused on travellers over the more than a decade of the
construction, cannot be calculated.
The disruptive politics and blunders associated with the construction of
this San Fernando to Point Fortin Extension of the Sir Solomon Hochoy
Highway, have left open wounds.
Those frustrations apart, the yet-to-be calculated additional costs to the
taxpayer resulting from the alleged corruption and mismanagement,
generally believed to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, make the
opening even more appreciated.
The first set of benefits of the highway, as indicated above, are the gradual
and eventual dispersion of the traffic congestions with the potential for
raising the productivity levels, and the reduction of the human stress
caused by the snarling of traffic of yesterday.
It goes without saying and wishing, that the highway extension should
have come to benefit the taxpayer at a far lower cost; the small mercy
though is that those problems have been surmounted and the highway is
now available for service.
However, the potential benefits extend beyond those listed above to the
need to fully utilise the quite considerable spaces between the City of San
Fernando and the Borough of Point Fortin in a most productive manner.
The general areas have been cited as the “Industrial Capital of the
Nation”. Increasingly though, as the effects of climate change pose
greater challenges to long and continuing use of petroleum resources,
every hectare of land and its potential uses for green industry becomes
absolutely critical.
Outside of the already dug and explored wells, and downstream territory
involved in industrial production of one kind or the other, other forms of
export-oriented industries, especially those designed to produce materials
to replace imports, must surely be conceived of, and land allocated for
utilisation.
In this small-island nation with very limited space, apart from leaving
lands for breathing, recreation and for celebration, the hectares abutting
the highway must be put to optimum use for contamination-free
production. But such decisions cannot be fruitfully arrived at without
thorough assessments being made for the best ways to utilise the lands
now made usable by the connected parts of the highway.
A very useful start to spudding clean production on the lands is the fact
that generations of workers in the near and deep south have long histories
of working in industrial, production-type operations. Those real and
generationally transferred abilities must be of great value.