MOTORISTS WHO often spend an hour or more crawling through Old Harbour, St. Catherine, will now find it easier going with the recently constructed Old Harbour bypass being opened to traffic yesterday.
The bypass, running from Bushy Park in St. Catherine to Sandy Bay, Clarendon, is expected to eliminate much of the gas burning, lost time and frustration which comes from being stuck in long lines of traffic in the area.
The 14.5 kilometre road, complete with overhead bridge and a number of exits, will have signs posted "within a week or so" , according to Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, so that persons using the road will know when and where to turn on and off.
The cost of the project was initially put at $1.2 billion and was funded by the Government of Jamaica and the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development.
It got under way in September 1999, with completion expected in August this year but the deadline was pushed to December owing to several work stoppages caused by worker protests.
Mr. Patterson, who toured major exit points near the Old Harbour main road and Bodles yesterday, said it will be "officially opened" on January 12, 2002 when the Government will publicly thank Kuwaiti representatives, who will journey to the island.
He said the early opening was being done given the volume of traffic on the roads at this time and especially along the south coast road.
"That will result in a significant ease of the congestion in Old Harbour. It now takes anything from an hour to two hours to go east or west through Old Harbour," he said.
The Prime Minister, who denied that work had progressed quickly on the road as an election ploy, joined Basil Burrell, Member of Parliament for South East Clarendon, in emphasising that work on road projects was not distributed along partisan lines. He also said that the final project costs were not in yet but he believed the road came in on budget.
Mr. Patterson urged motorists not to regard the new bypass as a race track. "It is not," he stressed.
