West Bay Road speed drops to 30mph
(CNS): Drivers along the West Bay road will need to cut their speed next month as the limit will be dropping from 40mph to 30mph. The planning minister, who also has responsibility for roads, has said that the traffic law regulations will be amended to change the speed limit on the road, one of the first highways where the speed limit is to be revised. However, government has not yet revealed which other roads will see a change in speed zones.
Minister Kurt Tibbetts told the Legislative Assembly this week that government will be changing speed zones around the island based on the consultation carried out by the National Roads Authority (NRA).
Along with the 10mph drop on the West Bay Road from its start in George Town to the Public Beach, there will be more pedestrian crosswalks along the road.
Tibbetts said government had received the equipment for an additional light and crosswalk near the Marriott Hotel, the location where a teenager was badly injured earlier this month when he was hit by a car as he crossed the road. The minister said government was looking at other ways of improving safety along the road by preventing the middle lane from being used to overtake and used only as a turning lane.
“This will enhance the safety of pedestrians, while making the drive more pleasant for the motorist. Those that are in a hurry can use the Esterley Tibbetts Highway,” he said.
The minister also described the extent of the road works currently underway to improve the network across Grand Cayman, from North Side to West Bay.
“We are once again raising the bar in Cayman that will make our roads safer, more pleasant to drive, and we believe this will further encourage more sustainable development,” Tibbetts said as he delivered a statement to the LA Thursday.
He told his colleagues that, with a limited budget, the works were being undertaken on a basis of need, with the worst roads taking priority, as he explained how the National Roads Authority chose where and when repairs were carried out.
“Using a sophisticated computer programme, roads are ranked by condition,” he said. “The ministry and the authority then consult with elected representatives to prioritize these works in line with available allocations, after which the list is finalised and the NRA can action.
“We have found this to be quite successful, for although it doesn’t remove all subjectivity from the process, it certainly adds a level of objectivity that is welcomed by the public, who have wondered why their road has never been addressed.”
Tibbetts said it was an ongoing process and more roads were in need of repair, but government was aware and would fix them. “Bit by bit, we are going to address roads in every district,” he said. “This isn’t about politics; this is about taking the available financial resources and spending them wisely.”
He said six roads have been repaired in East End and in North Side: the road to Rum Point is being addressed piece by piece because doing the whole road would have used up the entire road budget. But with careful allocation, 15 other roads in the district have been repaired and there are plans to do more on the junction at Rum Point.
Fifteen roads have also been paved in Bodden Town and 13 district roads in West Bay, with more to come, including the Birch Tree Hill Road from Rev Blackman to the Ed Bush Stadium, which he said had been neglected for years. In George Town, the NRA has now completed 27 roads, including the Canal Point Road at the Strand.
“This was a road that the public desperately wanted fixed but it had never been addressed,” he said.
Tibbetts explained that work had started on Godfrey Nixon Way, one of the larger projects that government has been planning to improve traffic in and out of George Town.
“We are planning similar work on Smith Road that will be taken on just as Godfrey Nixon is wrapping up. We all know how important Smith Road is for traffic to and from schools, businesses and the hospital, and how congested it can become at peak times during the day,” he said, noting that the design includes a more efficient drop-off and pickup for the Prep school, a turning lane to reduce congestion, and revised junctions.
The intersection with Anthony Drive and Melrose Lane will also become a key junction, he said, and would be the new link from Humber Lane that will connect Elgin Ave to Smith Road.
“Persons will not have to drive the entire length of one road or the other to cross over,” he said, adding that, as well as better traffic connection from the government building, ambulances will have better movement to and from the hospital.
Government is also working with the private sector in the industrial area around Sparky’s Drive that will lead to resurfacing that road with a more durable layer of asphalt for the heavy vehicles that use it.
Thanking the businesses that have contributed, he berated others that have been “slow to respond to government’s proposal”, saying, “It appears that the ones that cause the most damage are the same ones that are reluctant to contribute. Having the first section of this road repaired to a more durable standard could only be advantageous to all concerned.”
He further revealed that work on Red Gate Road, as well as upgrading it, will see it connected to the corner of the existing Owen Roberts Drive, opening up more area for development and giving tour operators, tourists and locals another avenue to and from the airport, cutting congestion.
Work is also underway on Shamrock Road in the vicinity of Red Bay Primary and in the Spotts area, and he said that safer realignment of the Chrissie Tomlinson Roundabout and work on the road Lighthouse School is next on the NRA list.
Category: development, Local News
While NRA is addressing road repairs and lower speed limits in some areas, it would be good to address pot-holes, improper or inadequate road markings, signs hidden by bush, dangerous road edge “drop-offs” (six inches in some areas), all of which contribute to the already poor and dangerous driving of many road users and constitute hazards to all.
Further, when will RCIPS start enforcing bicycle riding on the correct side of the road and requiring bicycles to have lights???!!! It’s amazing that more cyclists are not road casualties!
Finally, attention must be paid to the driver licensing testing program – people who simply don’t know road rules are being issued driving licenses. No surprise though, I encountered a driver test administrator who did not know that a vehicle on a round-about has right-of-way over a vehicle entering a round-about from a feeder road!
Often times change is confused with progress. Several accidents involving Caymanians and other nationalities have occurred in this same area and nothing was done then by Government to mitigate the traffic conditions that caused those accidents and now this one involving an american has somehow given rise to the idea tha making the spped limits lower will stop the tourists from not crossing the roads. Just this morning I saw a family of tourists crossing the road ten feet away from a crosswalk and it brought to mind that if they were back home they wouldn’t risk trying that, but coming to Cayman it’s alright all of a sudden to jay walk and then blame someone else when they are involved in an accident. Hhmmm just a thought; if we keep making changes to our island for tourists who are here for days, without considering the ramifications against those who live here, we might as well go back to the old days of pull carts, horse carriages, and renting burros because god forbid we even think to consider that vehicles nowadays have braking systems hundreds of times more advanced than the vehicles that were on the road back when the speed limits were first put it place. Just a thought.
If the Police are to continue to allow vehicles to exceed the posted limit by up to 5mph then the new limit should be 25mph. Speed humps engineered to allow travel at the posted speed, like outside the new Govt Admin building, need to be installed every half mile. This way trafic is slowed to the posted speed without the need for Police to waste their time enforcing it. Then these could be used for pedestrian crosswalks.
This speed reduction also needs to be extended to the northern section of WB Road. That is from the Salt Creek roundabout to the WB fire station. Please do not leave out that section.
Perhaps the country can also move towards installing automated speed traps which takes a picture of the license plate and driver who then gets the ticket in the mail. Don’t pay, incur penalty and license no renewed until all penalties have been paid up! Implement a point system for traffic offenses and 10 points accumulated will have you lose your license for x amount time………..
Thank you Minister Tibbetts and PPM. It’s amazing what can be done when leadership is not thinking about their next trip off the rock to binge gamble in a casino.
I believe this needs re-thinking. It isn’t the 40 mph thst’s causing the accidents….. It’s the drivers exceeding the speed limit. Enforce the laws you have and the accidents will decrease. Dropping the speed limit will not stop the ones speeding, but it will inconvenience most everyone else! How long will it be before someone thinks 20 mph should be the maximum speed? Get real, Enforce the law!
You still need police to enforce the speed limits. And that is where it goes wrong.
I hope there is some NRA budget for missing signage: We need some educational roundabout signage about the necessity for signaling intentions. This is a big issue in the multi-lane, multi-exit roundabouts where daily roadway collisions occur. Perhaps the motor insurance companies could pitch in on costs. Even if it is only at Butterfield roundabout – the one used by majority of arriving tourists and residents at some point. The Dump Road roundabout in Industrial Park also needs special signage on who has the right of way – clearly they use a completely different system that is based on vehicle tonnage and momentum?!
People don’t know how to use a round about anyway. They use it like a stop sign..
HEY!! A round about is to keep traffic flowing!! It is not a stop sign. You yield to oncoming traffic to your right, eh!
For those with speedometers calibrated in kph:
30mph = 48.23, call it 50 kph, not 30 kph. You know who you are.
Should be 25 on west bay road. But… at least it is something.
Should be a tram or horses and carriages on West Bay Road but the ladies would have a coronary episode.
SMB RD should be closed to all traffic except taxis and bicycles. A tram that goes back and forth could be installed to ferry people back and forth, this could also be a tourist attraction for those who want a quiet vacation. Gov could earn money by charging $1.00 each way per person. The vast majority of the tourist are on SMB and this project could pay for itself in 3-4 years.
Unfortunately Taxi’s are half of the problem.