Dear Editor,
I had the misfortune of travelling to Georgetown on a school day using the regular East Coast Highway. It took me 15 minutes to move from Grand Coastal to Better Hope Bridge. I would figure that about 400 vehicles suffered the same fate around that time.
The Apex School houses its students in buildings on both the northern and southern sides of the Vryheid’s Lust Public road. This means that students criss-cross that road throughout the school day, resulting in traffic being snarled everyday and thousands of commuters experiencing severe delays. Many employees arrive late at their workplaces in Georgetown. It seems unfair to have a public thoroughfare severely compromised because an investor decides he will open a school along that public thoroughfare.
What has happened to our zoning laws?
Another cause for concern is the presence of double lines (no overtaking) along, it seems, the entire lower East Coast Highway. What is the rationale? At a rough calculation, 75% of the roadway between Enmore and Plaisance has double unbroken yellow lines and, in some instances, spanning two entire villages (e.g. Friendship/Buxton). A response from the work ministry may help us to appreciate their thinking.
My third concern relates to the police charging people for overtaking on a bridge. My research shows that at the time when overtaking on a bridge was put in the statutes as an offence, the bridges on our main roadways were far narrower than the normal width of the bridges. Today, with the widening of the road surface and construction of new bridges, the surfaces at bridges are even wider than at the non-bridge surface. Yet we see double lines at these wide bridges and police charging drivers for overtaking on these wide bridges.
Again, a response would be most edifying.
Yours faithfully,
T. Jadunauth
Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to the Chief Traffic Officer for any comments he may wish to make.
