Martine Powers
When irate Cocorite residents set fire to Western Main Road on Monday morning, Director of Highways Roger Ganesh certainly got the message: Don’t try that again anytime soon. But Ganesh insists that the contentious “bow-tie” turnaround has indeed become dangerous, and will need a permanent fix sooner or later.
In a memorandum to MP for the area Amery Brown, Ganesh offered some insight into the thinking behind the closure of the Cocorite turnaround that erupted into a rowdy demonstration last week when protesters lit fire to debris to bring attention to the barriers preventing U-turns. Higher speeds, heavier traffic, and the growing population using Cocorite Terrace have made it much more difficult to use the turnaround safely in recent years, Ganesh said.
The turnaround, which is located just east of the point where Diego Martin Highway splits off from Western Main Road, is one of the few means by which people driving west on Western Main Road are able to turn around and proceed east toward Port-of-Spain. If drivers are not able to reverse at that spot, the next opportunities to make a U-turn are in Westmoorings and Diego Martin. Both options add 1.55 miles to the trip.
And it’s a well-used turnaround: On Friday, just after 12 pm, 12 cars used the bow-tie in exactly three minutes—about one every 15 seconds. Ganesh said in the memo that traffic studies suggest the impact on drivers isn’t all that onerous: When cars took that route during a recent Wednesday morning rush hour, the turnaround added an additional 13 minutes and 54 seconds. After 8.30 am, the additional time was only three to six minutes.
Still, when residents realised last week that government officials had barricaded the turnaround to prevent people from making a U-turn, they were far from pleased.
The road on Monday morning appeared more like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie than a humdrum am commute: In the pre-dawn hours, dozens of protesters dragged tyres and wooden crates onto Western Main Road and set them alight. They yelled and chanted while the queue of cars waiting to pass grew too long to see. Thick black smoke hung heavy in the air. That’s what Councillor Roxanne Long saw when she left her house in the wee hours to catch a car to get to work. At first, she thought someone’s house was on fire.
“When I reached the walkover, I saw the big action and I’m seeing everyone looking in one direction,” recalled Long, who represents Petit Valley and Cocorite. She ran over to get an explanation. “I told them this is not the best way to protest,” she said, “but the fire was already burning.”
Long said she believes that the highway officials underestimated the dramatic impact that closing the turnaround would have on residents. And after all, she said, the turnaround has existed for decades without being considered a problem. Why should it suddenly be deemed unsafe?
But things are different now, Ganesh said in his memo. He explained that changing traffic patterns had made it significantly riskier to make a U-turn at that location. Because of the Diego Martin Highway expansion project, lanes on the road are wider, and people feel more comfortable speeding. When they merge onto Western Main Road, they’re driving much faster than they did years ago.
Additionally, when the turnaround was constructed in the 1970s, traffic volumes were lower—fewer cars on the road meant that there were larger gaps in which to merge. Now, with more cars zooming by, there is a smaller margin of error.
To make matters worse, many of the people who use the Cocorite turnaround seek to make an immediate left turn onto Cocorite Terrace and Powder Magazine Phase 1. They must cross several lanes of traffic in a very short period of time, and that has made the turnaround more dangerous than before, said Trevor Townsend, senior lecturer in transportation engineering at the University of the West Indies.
The left turn comes up so quickly, it feels less like merging, and more like cutting straight across several lanes of high-speed traffic, Townsend said. “It’s almost a diagonal cut,” he said. Ganesh said the highway division will hire consultants in January to assess potential alternatives to the turnaround. One option could be the construction of an overpass, though that would likely be an expensive choice.
Long said she hopes any further studies or plans for the turnaround would involve discussions with Cocorite representatives and residents. “We know change will come, but you don’t spring change on people like that,” she said. “You do what it most feasible and what is most flexible.”
Ganesh maintains that the highway division offered advance notice of the traffic changes in newspaper advertisements earlier this month, as well as in August. He said the plan was also publicised through the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure’s Facebook page. However, the most recent post related to the project currently on the Facebook page occurred July 8.
A public meeting was held in January 2013 to discuss the closure of the east-to-west turnaround on Western Main Road—that U-turn was closed earlier this year—but did not focus on the west-to-east turnaround. James Boxhill of Petit Valley, who sells vegetables outside the Falls at Westmall, said he uses the turnaround almost every day.
“I find it is vital for the people of Cocorite and other users, too,” Boxhill said. “I don’t mind it risky, but you have to be cautious and everything will be OK, because ever since it has been so.”
