Roads – can’t live without them… can we?
The Green Hornet writes: I know I said this was to be a weekly perusal of the environmental and ecological threats to the Cayman Islands, but that was before the announcement of the start of the East-West Connector extension which would wipe out large chunks of the Central Mangrove Wetlands. And so…
Roads. It’s a word that sends shivers down the spine of every conservationist, ecologist or environmentalist, and for many good reasons. So, let’s make a list, in no particular order of importance.
To begin with, building a road into a pristine wilderness means that the wilderness is no longer pristine. It means that with the road will come people in cars, trucks, factories and mines, hotels and condos, subdivisions, parking lots, malls and messes, and the people who come will initially want to live in the wilderness because nobody lived there when the road was first built. Eventually, there will be so many people living there that those who came first will hate the noise and congestion and will want to build another road to another wilderness where nobody lives, and so on, and so on, and so on, until there isn’t any wilderness left.
I think the people living in the vicinity of the proposed expansion of the East-West Connector must be feeling this way about now. Wonder where they’ll go next?
So, next comes the habitat destruction caused by the construction of the road itself. Fill that swamp, fell that tree, blast that hillside, pour that concrete, flatten that bump, pour bitumen over the roadbed, put light standards and power pylons alongside the right-of-way. Everything is trashed as the big yellow machines and their payloads roll on.
Then there is the blight that follows the roads. Those machines we love to hate driven by what British playwright George Bernard Shaw called the “infernal combustion engine”. That’s why we put the roads there in the first place, just so those machines can move faster and the drivers won’t have to sit in long line-ups any more. The trouble is, folks (ask any traffic engineer, he’ll confirm it’s true), the more roads you build, the more cars people buy to fill them up. Anyone who’s been to California will confirm that. In fact, ask anyone who lives in Savannah or Bodden Town right now. And how fast do you really want to go? Fast enough to kill yourself and others, of course. If you build a car that can travel at 100mph, then you will surely find some fool who will see if he can drive it that fast.
The pollution that roads bring is horrendous. Every vehicle needs fluids of all kinds to function. Engine oil, coolant, brake fluid, transmission fluid, clutch fluid, the list goes on. Every vehicle spills these fluids onto the roads as they pass along them. The fluids build up on the road’s surface until a heavy rainfall comes along and washes these toxic liquids into the areas around the road. In the US and Canada most freeway intersections now have areas of wetlands built alongside them where run-off is directed and the pollutants are removed by wetland plants. In Cayman those toxic fluids wash into the land at the side of the roads and ultimately find their way into the ocean.
Next, let’s look, albeit briefly, at the millions of tons of carbon dioxide that our vehicles emit every hour of every day. The more roads you build, the more vehicles will be bought to drive on them, and the more emissions we will pump out to help climate change on its merry way.
Then there is the financial burden that roads place on our economies. Every year in Cayman we spend millions of dollars on building new roads and repairing old ones. Dollars that could and should be spent on other more important items. I’d love to know what percentage of our annual budget goes on roads. Rather large, I would think, and we merely reflect what is happening throughout the rest of the world.
Take this budgetary debacle: the continuation of the Esterley Tibbetts Highway and its freeway extension to West Bay. In the mid-2000s the LA voted for this highway to have an additional $7.4 million for its phase 3. Also receiving the LA’s blessings was $2.57 million to add to the $1 million for Gazetted claims of lands acquired for the highway extension. Then, of course, there was the Dart Tunnel, which was, I’m sure, paid for by said Mr Dart, who also, I’m sure, helped fund the rest of the extension. According to a GIS release at the time, a “significant portion of the expense was anticipated for the purchase of a material called geotextile, used to strengthen marshy areas to enable the construction of the highway over them. Average delivery of some 3,000 cubic yards of material per day would be racked up over the next couple of weeks.” Gotta fill in that pesky swamp and chop down them mangroves, right?
Final projected cost of that highway was at least $10 million. Communications and Works Minister Arden McLean at the time told the LA that $10 million would be reallocated from the Ministry of Education to finance the highway extension. Mr McLean said the reduction in funds would not hurt that ministry but it would be replaced in three years. I’m not sure that it ever was.
So where is the money coming from this time around for the extension of the East West Connector? Hmmmmm. And exactly how much is this “extension” going to cost? Well, the last projection I could find was $50 million, and that was in 2014. Probably almost double that by now. Oh, and Joey Hew has just announced that another $30 million is going to be spent over the next three years on a variety of projects. These include the Camana Bay – Airport Bypass, which in 2018 alone was projected to cost $34 million. So adding that to the other roads projects just announced by Mr Hew, we’re looking at $64 million.
Keep going with the math… that means well over $100 million in the next, say, five years? Wonder where that’s coming from?
Monorail an alternative
This was a proposal I made when first examining the lack of planning which has forced the addition and expansion of all those roads, now applied to the eastern eye. An alternative solution — an interesting alternative. How about a monorail the length of the current “bypass” aka Dart Freeway? We should have built one up the middle of the existing right-of-way of the West Bay Road, no need to buy extra land. It could have been made extremely funky, maybe with coloured murals. And think of the tourist attraction. A quick, speedy zip up to the Turtle Farm or the (almost) Barkers Park. An amazing view of the Caribbean just across the beach (except there are high rises blocking that view now). Just comfort high above the seething motorists, who will soon be sitting in traffic jams again unless, like Bermuda, we limit the number of cars people are allowed to own.
Monorails operate most successfully over short, fixed distances and can be found in many different parts of the world. Perhaps Japan has the most, with several cities in that country served by small systems. The Chinese government recently announced the opening of an “elevated light rail line” in the city of Chongqing. However, it’s important to note that the system referred to in these reports does not use light rail technology, but rather a proprietary monorail system provided by the Japanese firm, Hitachi. To reduce construction costs of urban rail transit systems — typically subways — the Chinese government has begun encouraging “light rail” alternatives: monorails.
According to news reports, each monorail train set running on the Chongqing system has four units (“cars”) and can hold about five hundred people. The new service attracted nearly ten thousand visitors on its first day of operation.
Of course, you wouldn’t get these kinds of numbers here, would you? And we wouldn’t need as many “rail cars”. However, monorails are an extremely efficient system of travelling short distances. The early systems tended to be noisy, but new technology has all but eliminated this problem. A big advantage is that they don’t take up much land. And if you want to check one out, just drop by Disney World in Orlando and ride their system. Since 1991, the Walt Disney World Resort has operated a fleet of 12 Mark VI trains on its monorails. Disney says that more than 30 years of research and development, started in the 1950’s, has brought the monorail technology to where it is today. The 13.6 mile monorail system carries over 150,000 guests to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot parks on an average day.
The Disney World monorail system has been in continuous operation since 1971 and the current expanded monorail began operation in 1990, with the full fleet of 12 cars in service by early 1991. The Mark VI has a higher passenger capacity as well as improved air conditioning, door systems and improved safety features. Each Mark VI train consists of six cars. The overall length is 203 feet with a capacity of 365 passengers. More info on the Disney website.
And then there’s the sea
Before starting to moan and groan about the bottlenecks, increased cars, etc, here’s another alternative: ferries! As a culture that prides itself on its ocean-going past, why not revitalise it? After all, that’s how we travelled between communities before the roads came. Have a ferry terminal at each of the main centres on the island’s coast — East End, Bodden Town, Savannah, George Town and West Bay. The Northern route already exists from George Town to Rum Point. The shuttle bus that just started running around George Town would just need to link up. Parking locations at each terminal would also aid on-and-off walk-on traffic.
Think of all those unemployed tender operators who have for years been transferring cruise ship passengers to and from town. Why not expand their service and create a super new industry? Maybe it would even slow us down some — and we could sure use that! I recall the furore when hovercraft were first used as ferries, and that turned out to be just noise. Now they’re an everyday occurrence, and there are ferry fleets around the world in places like Washington State and Maine in the US, and in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edwards Island in Canada. In Asia, of course, they are many and plentiful — the ferries between Hong Kong, Macau (even with the bridge) mainland China and the many islands in-between are but one example.
What great way to revive our seafaring heritage! And we wouldn’t have to destroy any more of our rapidly disappearing natural heritage.
Category: Land Habitat, Science & Nature, Viewpoint
There is way too much environmentalism down here. The pendulum has swung too far. We need more roads. I am ok with filling the wetland as as needed and developing them over time just like we did on Seven Mile Beach to make way for the Caymanians of the future. I’m not advocating we pave paradise and put up a parking lot. I’m simply advocating that we stop with the sacred cows and trying to save every last blade of grass and bush. There are thousands of miles of unspoilt coastal land in Panama and Costa Rica. Don’t like it here?.. Don’t like the development?.. Don’t let the door hit you in the caboose as you make your exit for there. Look on a map of our region. We are a tiny speck of land in the Caribbean Sea .. trying to save “that” from development is utterly ridiculous. The reason we’re a desirable place to live is “because” we filled mangroves and paved roads. The very reason this forum exists and there are people here to bitch and moan is “because”. somebody developed something here. Let’s keep developing. I’d miss you all too much if you weren’t here. Let’s be proudent about it and make it nice, but for goodness sake keep building. This is too small a Country to be locking up valuable land from development and talking down roads.
Those who think this government or this governor as a matter fact gives a shit about the environment are seriously deluding themselves.A Parasite kills the host and they intend to destroy Cayman.
We are headed towards TOTAL gridlock once the new 50 storey building is built in the Seven Mile Beach Corridor in 2023. Better wake up people because unlimited car growth is not sustainable.
Probably need to adopt the Bermuda policy of limiting the number of vehicles people are allowed to own.
Our quality of life is going to go downward unless we do something soon.
The Governor has nothing to do with it. The people elect the MP’s and they should do something about the environment. Only person / MP i have ever heard speak intelligently about environmental issues is Wayne Panton.
The rest are just blowing hot air.
Very sad.
I’ve read some tosh in my time on this website but this is on another level. Safe to assume the author lives in a house or condo that was once in the “wilderness” but has since been paved over, uses the roads that they so dislike on a daily basis and that 99% of everything they consume is jetted in from Miami (at the very least).
There’s so many holes to pick in this article that I can’t even be bothered. Let’s just go with the easy one. There was very little “pristine wilderness” when Columbus pitched up here. It was 99% mosquito infested swamp and a great deal of it still is. It’s not exactly Yosemite or the Malvern hills.
Not entirely sure why CNS are providing the platform.
Pastor Alfredo
Weird how so many Christians are eager to destroy the biodiversity their imaginary god supposedly created. You’d think they would cherish and protect it.
#lame
Wrong on all counts, mate. Spurious foolishness.
So Pastor Alfredo, rather than just criticizing why not offer some solutions if you are so smart?
The locally sourced politicians just seem hell-bent on wrecking their own country. It’s sad to watch. But as long as their circle benefits then to hell with the future generations.
A ferry and a reliable, 2nd or even 1st world bus service would do the trick.
This is all that Grand Cayman need to solve traffic congestion and it can be done.
“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.”
– Aldo Leopold
You need to let us know who Aldo Leopold is.
Google it!
Why?
“Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.” Arnold Toynbee
“I’ll be back” – Other Arnie
The single raindrop doesn’t believe it is responsible for the flood. Likewise, every individual who has moved to the Cayman’s have contributed to the problem. That includes me. So I try not to be a hypocrite about it. The Caymanians on that side of the island need a proper road, period.
I find it a bit hypocritical for people to move to Cayman, thereby CONTRIBUTING to the destruction of the local environment and then try to be eco-warriors. Here is an idea, if we want to deal with the traffic issue, let’s be very strict in the number of people we allow to move here!! That won’t be popular, and it shouldn’t. But just as unpopular is the hypocritical approach that some people have when it comes to this issue. The eastern districts require a proper road. What happens if the current road is cut off by a natural disaster? Do we expect them to just accept and wait for the Government to come up with a plan B??!!! No!! It’s not just about easing traffic congestion, it’s also about access and safety.
I have lived on WB road since I moved to Cayman several years ago. After being “trapped” in traffic in Peace Bay for FOUR hours (until police did their measurements) because is a car accident, I said I would never move to that side of the Island. That isn’t fair to people to have to go through that.
So, you moved to Cayman… Find ‘others’ who have moved to Cayman to be hypocritical… And you suggest restricting ——- People LIKE YOU from moving here????????????
Who’s the hypocrite? Maybe you should re-consider your residency here.
4:27, read their post again, as I fear it went over your head.
you weren’t here then when traffic from WB into GT was like that – the sacrifices we lost for Dart to build you that new road from WB to GT and the tunnel monstrosity. More roads = more cars. Reliable, affordable, safe, alternative transport is a reasonable solution as well as not having an imported population boom.
Sigh… you obviously have no idea how much a monorail system costs. You’d have to tax all residents at about 50% to pay for one the length of Esterley Tibbetts Highway. Next.
smh… for crying out loud, stop looking at cost! It will be more costly if we destroy our environment! Have some vision! Adding more buses and lanes to our roads with a growing population, does not make any sense at all. And you can’t stop people from buying cars. We need another mode of transportation. Yes, a Monorail is not going to be cheap, but we have to start now, PESSIMISM ABOUT COST WHEN THERE IS A DIRE NEED, WILL KEEP US IN TROUBLE!
It’s simply not feasible on a small island. Monorails are only cost effective in places with an extremely high density of large population. No amount of good intentions and wishing is going to change that. Seriously – it would cost all of the national budget for years to pay for the kind of monorail system Green Hornet is suggesting. It would cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to build and usage tickets would price out most people who would need to use a monorail. I’m all for addressing the traffic issues in creative ways, but can we stick to creative non-fiction instead of science fiction and fantasy?
Huuuuuush all a you. The problem the real problem is that we don’t think anything through to arrive at sensible conclusions. This goes from us the people electing Pirates to represent us who continue the same old projects and we end up having an ever green never ending dilemma with no matters being completed and things go from worse to worser.? The politicians however, those so called bastions of hope and prosperity for all go home every month with fat salaries, big fancy homes and cars and children educated abroad in the best institutions. That’s what we electand that’s what we get.in return, pure and simple.
A tired a hearing the same darn talk every day every month every four years, I tired of people suffering in their own land while others reap , I tired of hearing people bawling for change and no change coming. Looks like the only way is to really start a serious revolution then eyes will be opened,, a lot of the foreigners will go away and we will have to struggle to come back to some semblance of reality from this fake economy which can’t continue this way. This fake leadership that don’t cut it, this incessant development that is taking our oxygen away and sending us into dark despair and the reservation which I’m sure is being talked about in those circles of corporate power who see only dollars and cents and not quality of life for they have it made and are not living in the shade but in their air conditioned empires.
Some a dem politicians saying “it’s time” but a really wonder if they truly understand “what time it is” : and how to make a better place for the overall quality of life for their people. We standing back and standing by for now politicians but you know really time is running out for the haphazard way of running things. Change or be forcefully changed upside down or right side up. Ona choose quick cause we watching .
Or we could actually streamline civil service and get rid of most of them and pay for it.
How about a bridge from Bodden Town to George Town.
How about teleportation? Scotty will beam you up!
Copycat. Savannah to Camana because it rhymes.
A very well respected former Premier told me the quiet plan for Cayman, to become a western Singapore. It’s been in the works for years and is inevitable. The internal Government papers all make clear that Grand Cayman needs a minimum population of 350,000-500,000 to be economically sustainable and relevant, especially with the OECD push around Permanent Establishment.
This is not a choice. This is a guaranteed plan over the next ten years. Politicians will promise you conservation whilst continuing exactly on track for 1/2 million residents. Like the marshes, anyone that doesn’t like it will be rolled over.
You lost us at “very well respected former Premier “.
And destroy the north sound reefs?
Traffic will always be a problem, if we continue to invite people to live here. This island is just too small to have so many people.
Or at least, so many people that opt to drive their own car with nobody else in it. Many could/would ride a bike if there were safe corridors to do so. Those corridors don’t have to be on, or anywhere near asphalt. PTU is also a gong show. They need new mgmt, extended operational hours, medium capacity zero emission vehicles, defined routes with vehicle tracking, cashless digital public transport payment method, and a whole lot of driver training.
CNS- Do you really think you are a fair journalist when you publish a story and says the comments are CLOSED? Really and you even asking for donation to fair journalism. You will never publish this or write and censure me.
RIDICLIOUS
CNS: Calm down, silly person. We close the comments on articles about criminal cases from the time a person is arrested until there is a verdict, the case has been thrown out or the defendant has pleaded guilty. This is for legal reasons, in that we would be in trouble with the court if we did not do this. Google the sub judice rule. Note that this follows UK law; it does not apply in the US.
You have not said which article you are in a tither about but I am guessing that it is a crime article as I don’t believe that I have closed the box on any other article for a while. It is extremely rare for us to do this on articles that are not about crime and we always do it for good reason.
I’ve avoided delving into the difference between the article, which is the product of journalism, and the comments, which aren’t. But one thing at a time…
This has nothing to do with the matter at hand (roads) so I won’t be posting any replies.
Green Hornet – thanks for a very insightful article, filled with common sense alternatives. However, that’s perhaps exactly why the “powers” might never consider some of them – common sense. For example, Bermuda has a ferry system which dove-tails into its land public transport system and it works seamlessly and efficiently.
Some years ago, I represented my employer organization on Cayman’s Public Transport Board. Simultaneously, I travelled to Bermuda quite often on business. On one trip I collected names of all the administrators of Bermuda’s public transport system, took numerous photos of the Hamilton bus and ferry terminals, collected bus and ferry schedules, maps, etc. and presented to our PTB with a recommendation that the PTB either visited Bermuda and evaluated their system/met with the players, or invited them here. Either way, for us to assess their system with a view of getting some guidance and ideas.
Guess what…. No contact, no visits, NOTHING as yet!! Why? Because my suggestions were common sense!!
Perhaps they’re waiting to hire an expensive expat consultant to offer similar suggestions as ours!!
Bermuda has a superb transportation system. We could learn so much from them as their problems 20 years ago were similar to ours now.
They also have a wonderful modern airport built by Canadians.
Why can we not learn from others?
“…Monorails” ????????? Your credibility just got flushed.
You had me until you said clutch fluid
Funny, didnt see any “environmentalist” protesting development on seven mile beach that is on-going! Suddenly, roads are bad now that eastern districts need a proper non-coastal highway that not only deals with traffic but will be crucial for disaster recovery and affordable property. The fact is that inequal development brings inequal societies that suffer many social ills from this inequality.
yes many did and continue to do. The erosion on 7MB, loss of turtle nesting sites, loss of beach access, beach rock removal, stealing sand to dump on 7mb and Darts mega tunnels, roads through mangroves – have all had protests and objections through planning and in the public. If you didn’t see it it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
This article is why I find it frustrating that Joey Hew says one thing but does another. He says that roads aren’t the solution, but he just builds roads. Okay and one small section of Complete Streets at Godfrey Nixon Way (announced just before elections).
$30 million on roads but the GT bus isn’t funded past 7 pm.
To be fair, he also painted some now faded green squares on the roads
People, like the author of this article, must be among Cayman leaders.
The East-West Connector extension must be stopped. All people who care about the Cayman Islands, environmental activists, must unite and stop the project.
They can take CIG to court to stop the project in a protected Central Mangrove Wetlands. The project violates their constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment and their right to protect it for future generations.
What happened to the government initiative of encouraging ‘work from home’. We seem to have conveniently forgotten that for the most part this worked very well in ‘lockdown’!
This is the most sensible, meaningful and rightful article in a long time! Ten millions👍.
What about flyover roads? Why can’t there be 1 from Savannah to Camana?
How about one big one over Cuba to Miami?
There will be one day but it will be a monorail.
Caymanians do not have the education or imagination to overcome normal human problems that other areas of the world have solved long ago. It is part of it’s “charm” and will not change until the culture starts to teach its people that education is something to treasure.
How insulting. Caymanians cannot overcome the overwhelming fatigue of every nationality coming to this country, supposedly to work and remit the money home, contributing very little domestically, and in time the economic migrants should desire to return home themselves to reap the benefits of their sojourn overseas. This is what the human capital experiment was supposed to accomplish. Rather each individual conjures up dreams of grand wealth and is willing to sacrifice just about anything to accomplish it, including the health of the host country. The new “Cayman Lifestyle” that is fueling all this unnecessary development/ Unsustatainble growth was not designed by or inclusive of Generational Caymanians. Couple that with corrupt and foreign-centric governments, and a passive society equates to the Cayman Islands you have today. We know who we have been “developing” for all these years. We also knew for a long time the idealistic society the wealthy want to create within these islands do not include the natives they found here. Answer this please: If every other country in the world has overcome their “normal human problems” and the Cayman Islands hasn’t, Why do over 130 nationalities (not counting the waiting list) leave these utopian, problem-free countries and continue to flock to the cayman islands with no intentions on ever leaving? It seems very counterintuitive.
Extract tax free money until roll over. Move home.
You should have stopped after the first two words, which I agree with. The rest of the post lowers you to the same level of the original poster.
7:51a
SOB, and I we had the foresight to facilitate what wretches like you now enjoy.
Slither away, won’t you!
You asked us to come. If you are not benefitting, how is that our fault.
To 7:51 AM – I take offence to your comment that Caymanians don’t have the education. There are many educated Caymanians – we were the ones that built this island – not the ones that come here for a big paycheck, then leave when they feel like.
Would agree with you if I wasn’t sitting in the obscene traffic that we have to endure twice daily from and to East End. The eastern districts have seen an increase in population because working class people can no longer afford to buy property closer to town. Hence the current roads are no longer fit for purpose. If we want to prevent more roads in our pristine wildernesses, we need to get a handle on the obscenely overpriced costs to buy/build/rent closer to town (many people would prefer living in town).
…and slow down the mass immigration into our Islands