Gordon Town road alternative to be ready by year end - Breakaway could be fixed by April, says NWA
Published:Monday | December 7, 2020 | 12:12 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
Work is progressing on a $60-million alternative route from Papine to Gordon Town in St Andrew after a major landslide damaged the main roadway last month.
The work on the new route through Savage Pen, which Prime Minister Andrew Holness said was previously no more than a footpath, is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
“It is a great deal of work, but you are cutting a brand new road, effectively. There was a pathway here before, now you have to widen it, and you will have to create a sub-base and do the base course, and then you have to put on asphaltic concrete,” Holness said during a tour on Saturday.
National Works Agency (NWA) officials, including CEO E.G. Hunter and Director of Technical Service Roger Smith; St Andrew East Rural Member of Parliament Juliet Holness; and Everald Warmington, the minister without portfolio with responsibility for works, were also among the touring party.
The section of the roadway toured was steep and winding, and could pose a challenge to motorists and pedestrians.
The prime minister said that the design and other documentation for repairing the breakaway along Gordon Town road had been completed, but the $200-million emergency rehabilitation project was not sustainable.
“The NWA has prepared several alternatives and has also proposed a solution for repairing the breakaway. The repairing option will cost the Government in the region of $200 million. It is the cheapest option we have, and it’s the quickest option,” Holness said. “There are problems with that, however, from a long-term perspective. We don’t see the repair as a sustainable solution because the entire stretch is under threat from environmental and other conditions.”
Hunter supported that view, given that with more heavy rains, another breakaway could happen along a nearby section of the roadway.
“There is the possibility that another section of that corridor will go, and we don’t know when,” Hunter said. “One of the things that we are doing now is to examine the corridor to get a good feel for the areas that are most likely to have a problem ... . It’s a vast area and the expenditure is likely to be very high and obviously, affordability is something that we will have to contend with.”
According to Holness, based on the soil type in the area, it would be very difficult to engineer an appropriate solution.
The NWA had explored other potential alternatives along the northern and southern sides of the Hope River, but these proved to be much more expensive and would be much longer, adding to the travel time and transportation cost.
“... It’s not a sustainable solution, but it will reconnect the communities and see to the flow of traffic once more,” Holness said of the route now being constructed.
Hunter explained that the surveys and design that will inform the Gordon Town road repairs have been completed, with soil samples already laboratory-tested, giving them a clear indication of the nature of the material with which they will be working. Further, the designs and costing have been completed and the NWA is now set to progress to the construction stage, pending the outcome of the contract procurement process.
“ ... We have done all the documentation ready, so that come January, we should be able to move very quickly. In essence, we are going to be using mass concrete for the base and that will give us a lot of pluses in terms of time. There will be some difficulty with the heavy equipment being able to transport all the things up there because, as you see, the passage is very narrow, but we’ll be able to mange that, so we estimate that the construction time should be about three months, weather permitting,” he said.