Report shows traffic volume doesn’t justify EWA
(CNS): A transport review by Ardent Consulting Engineers of the proposal for the controversial East-West Arterial Road extension found that it is not justified on traffic volume alone and will not improve the traffic troubles for those living in the Eastern Districts. The independent report shows that the real cause of the congestion is the funnel effect around Grand Harbour and that traffic patterns reveal it is pinch-points west of the proposed road where conflicting streams of traffic need to be managed.
The UK consultants were commissioned to undertake the report by local conservationists in Cayman in partnership with the UK charity, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The author of the report, Kevin Kay, a divisional director with the engineering consultants, said the existing single-carriageway road already meets the current and expected traffic demands for residents in the Eastern Districts.
While improvements to junction capacity could help in certain locations, the key problem areas are much closer to George Town and they will not be addressed by this proposed three-lane highway cutting through the Central Mangrove Wetlands, the report found.
“On the face of it, the recorded traffic volumes should be within the link capacity of the road network to accommodate,” Kay wrote in the report. “The levels of traffic recorded on the eastern sections would not seem to justify the creation of the EWA Extension, based on current traffic flows. Even if one was to account for the anticipated level of growth in the eastern districts, and the consequential increase in traffic that would occur as a result, it is difficult to see how the NRA could justify any infrastructure beyond the Hirst Road-Shamrock Road connector.”
The report indicates that the section of the proposed road from Hirst Road to Lookout Gardens may open up land for development, but “it would not appear to be justifiable based on highway capacity alone”. The arguments to support the Frank Sound stretch are even more doubtful on traffic grounds alone.
Although the proposed road would cut journey times, which Kay said was an important factor for the National Roads Authority’s consideration, he found that there are alternatives that would reduce commute duration for residents in East End and North Side by the same amount. He said the local traffic data he reviewed shows that much of the shorter journey times that officials here believe the EWA would provide could be achieved through the widening of Bobby Thomspon Way.
“What the… data suggests is that the effect of infrastructure improvements taking place on existing highway corridors would be far greater than those which could be achieved by the EWA Extension,” Kay found. “It would therefore seem beneficial to prioritise those infrastructure projects that rely on the existing roads, rather than through the creation of new roads, with the environmental implications that this would entail.”
He pointed out that by focusing on the longest trips, the data has been skewed toward the apparent benefits of the EWA, when in fact the majority of drivers would be making shorter trips and not using the last and most environmentally damaging part of the road. The review states that the focus should be on journey times from Bodden Town, which is expected to generate more traffic as the population there continues to grow.
Kay found that other existing gazetted roads and proposed projects in that area could be undertaken instead that would smooth out the traffic jams. “Other highway improvements could be implemented to provide further East-West connectivity through corridors that are parallel to Shamrock Road, but without resorting to the level of infrastructure proposed through the EWA Extension,” Kay found.
But with the pinch-points really much further west where traffic from multiple locations converge in areas where the NRA is already doing work, the report argues that the case for the EWA extension is unfounded on the grounds of traffic benefits alone. Kay suggests that the rationale for the EWA is partly driven by a need to access more land for development, but if government wants to address the traffic there are other options.
The BP40, which was gazetted in 1979 from Manse Road to Pedro Castle, with an intermediate connection with Beach Bay Road, is now part of a deal between the government and the developers of the propose Beach Bay Hotel, but this has still not begun. This review suggests that this road would offer similar benefits in a much shorter time frame than the East-West Arterial Extension and with less consequent impacts.
Other road improvement projects currently underway could also be more helpful, but Kay said it was too early to establish the journey time savings benefits that they would offer. But the projects around George Town are likely to have a greater effect overall because they will cater for the needs of a greater number of users than the EWA extension.
Improving buses, encouraging cycling, dealing with the number of cars on the road and other issues are also noted in the review, including the fact that 67% of children are being taken to school in private cars, which is a massive part of Grand Cayman’s traffic issues. Kay said school travel planning or the creation of a ‘Safer Routes to School’ programme or the introduction of free or discounted bus for all students could go a long way to tackling the traffic congestion.
Summing up his research, Kay said the “funnelling” effect of high levels of traffic at peak times on the edge of George Town is the main problem. The widening of Linford Pierson Way, Crewe Road and Shamrock Road as well as the existing sections of the East-West Arterial Road are more likely to reduce traffic than the significant level of infrastructure through the mangroves that the EWA requires.
“It is also the case that other forms of intervention could be implemented by the government to ‘manage down’ the impact of traffic… with investment in alternative modes of transport such as public transport, active travel infrastructure and other demand management measures,” the review found.
Th public meetings on the terms of reference for the environmental impact assessment for this road begin tomorrow night in North Side. According to the scoping document published last week, the engineers contracted to undertake that exercise will be expected to consider alternatives to the road. In his review, Kay said they should also include a benefit-cost ratio of the project and whether or not it “confers sufficient value-for-money to justify its implementation”.
That should not be limited to the construction and maintenance costs for the scheme but also any mitigation measures that would be required, particularly in the Central Mangroves, Kay said.
The NRA plans two meetings this week on the EIA terms of reference, the first at 6pm Tuesday in North Side at the district civic centre, and the second on Thursday in Savannah at the CI Baptist Church Hall, 163 Pedro Castle Road. The public is also invited to submit comments before the short window of opportunity for people to weigh in on the project closes in just two weeks on 21 February.
Comments on the draft ToR can be submitted in writing to the Environmental Assessment Board
c/o the DoE via email DOE@gov.ky, post, or hand delivery to the
Department of Environment Office.See the transport review in the CNS Library.
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Category: development, Local News
Regardless of any sensible opposition to the arterial extension or anything showing it’s unjustified, this Government will push it through with brute force and ignorance.
Ask Rory Gallagher.
School busses collect CI$5000 per month from Government. The driver gets CI$1000 per month for one trip to school from different districts in the morning and one trip to drop off children close to their road where they live.
Grand Harbour is the problem, but we need a traffic light to solve the inexperience of new drivers. They need to learn when you’re next and you have an ample space to hit the gas and go. That’s scary for them and that’s happening all early in the morning or the evening it’s very frustrating for experience drivers to watch. But it takes time and sometimes years for some. Put a traffic light instead of a round about 2 1/2 minutes for each side. In the morning 2 lanes into South Sound then right turn onto Walkers and Smith road ( 2 lanes in the morning until 3 pm then reverse back through South Sound) left Huldah ave. Then onto North Sound road to Esterley Tibbets highway. Then there is no reason to travel through Seafarers way unless you work directly from Boilers road to Mary street.
The new road which should have been finish already from North church street to Eastern Ave would connect drivers around and away from the centre of delays in traffic. This would be a way to join the highway to 7 mile beach, Camana bay, etc.
Public buses have had a hard time because drivers were filling their buses before leaving town. But very little to none would be found from Jacques Scott all the way to East End or North Side. 22 seater buses with no jump seats charging 1.50 to 3.00 is a joke when only one trip to town and the evening trip back is full. Most to the rest of the day is less than 10 people going and less going back. East End has very little customers throughout the day. Once you hit breakers you may have 2-3 customers going to East End.
So THE only way this will work is if Government will pay owners of larger busses a monthly amount to maintain their buses so they can pay for $200 a day for fuel, $250 per tyre per 6 months batteries, cleaning after abuse and dirt $50 per day, Drivers pay $15 per hour. This is just for the Eastern bus run.
5:56 — That’s a very good suggestion, but one further consideration comes to mind:
The new road (from North Church Street to Eastern Avenue) cuts through low-income housing, which leaves certain home-owning families out of a residential home, and creates a socio-economic detriment (nightmare) for those who lost (and will loose) their homes for the sake of gentrification: query, is this truly balanced against rationality and proportionality (s.19(1), Bill of Rights) against development of the socio-economic environment (not physical environment: ie, not just land and sea as well as biodiversity) that is not harmful to present or future generations of Caymanians (s.18(1), Bill of Rights)?
Are you a lawyer, Orrie? You sound very clever with all of your references to the law, so presumably you are. I am very impressed. We all are. Well done.
Yes, I am a lawyer. Many thanks for your kind words. My views expressed, however, are my own personal (not professional) contribution to dialogue as a citizen weighing in on locals issues affecting the Cayman Islands.
Here is SOME of what is coming folks:
10 story office building near completion at Camana Bay opening next month.
Flowers new 7-story 150,000 sq foot building at Cricket Square slated for completion in 2024.
Indigo Hotel, 280 rooms, for completion in 2024. Lots more tourists here and hundreds of new residents to work there.
Many, many small and large condos and developments for new residents going up throughout the island.
Accounting and law firms bursting at the seams, needed more staff (most of the accounting firms have some staff working at home as offices are full).
New Shetty hospital at Camana Bay next year, more doctors, nurses, workers etc.
More resident workers means more kids in schools. ETC
Bottom line: Going to get A LOT worse. A LOT. Wait until next January. (Any meaningful solutions are medium term, at a minimum).
well, it would only take one new Ian or Ivan to bring everything to a standstill
SWFL is still recovering from September 2022 Ian. In fact, repairs have not even started in most damaged buildings, though roofs are covered with tarps already.
Finding licensed contractors to do the repairs is difficult, cost of materials has sky-rocketed. I am not even talking about re-building houses that were destroyed or condemned. Beaches are still being rebuilt.
🤬😡🤯 I ran out of words to express my feelings.
Real world dedicated commuter bicycling lane installation costs less than $10,000 per mile. CIG have no acceptable excuses to leave that part of traffic commitment unaddressed.
Bike lanes in Grand Cayman would become suicide lanes- this in not Amsterdam or Copenhagen
Your wish is understandable, but not practical- there never will be bike lanes, let alone safe bike lanes-roads design is a foreign concept for Caymanas well as The Road to Zero Strategy.
Lastly, mindset, “cultural” habits of Cayman residents are not supportive of bike lanes.
CIG committed to building this infrastructure in 2015, and the NRA was given our money to deliver infrastructure and plans which included provisions for cyclists. That’s just a fact.
The increase in cyclists will be negligible even if there was adequate infrastructure. It’s too hot and rainy to commute. Only the poorest and cyclist needs ride bikes now and half the low income people cycling would probably take the bus if it was reliable
Wrong. Todays E-bikes and scooters go 25mph, you almost need a windbreaker to keep warm. Some of the fancier ones cost more than a used Mercedes. Over 200 days of sunshine a year. Last but not least, we already paid for bike lanes that the NRA failed to deliver from 2015 onwards. Outside of normal commuters, our Hotels and cruise ships all have fleets of bikes, where providing safety for our guests should be a top priority.
E-bikes and scooters are illegal to use on public roads.
No rules here, bobo
Add 2 more 10 story buildings on WB road, the pageant beach building, GT 1, the massive housing development on south sound road and dozens more from south sound to far west bay, including a second grove complex.
The quality of life is being diminished by the day.
The need for the EWA is being pushed by Minister Ebanks and DP Saunders because they both want to see massive developments in their districts in order for financial gains for their friends and family members. We could easily invest $100 million in to a island wide 24 hour bus/monorail service aligned with high speed ferry services that would include the Sister Islands. An overhead 15 mile bridge would have little environmental destructive impact on our prestine Central Mangrove Wetlands, which has to be protected for future generations to enjoy. The private schools should all provide school busses and time to consider building more smaller schools in order to alleviate our traffic issues.
As much as this seems to be a reasonable objection, didn’t we just allow Minister Julianna O’Conner Connolly to load up and corrupt the independence of the NRA Board, to ensure her preferred benefactor outcome? You can’t make this stuff up.
When being paid by a group against the road, of course the “findings” will be that the road is unnecessary
he who pays the piper calls the tune
Sustainable Cayman was contacted by an experienced environmental consultant who volunteered to assist them with their campaign to support the protection of the Central Mangrove Wetlands after seeing a blog about the campaign. When the concerns about immediate remedies to traffic and resilience issues were explained that the road was trying to fix, the consultant reached out to one of his contacts, Kevin Kay at Ardent, for advice. Keven produced the report for free, as a stand-alone review of the effectiveness of the proposed EWA on traffic. Someone made a comment that this individual had never been to the Cayman Islands but the report was conducted using the NRA and government’s publicly available traffic modelling data.
Do the findings not make sense to you?
The bottleneck at around Grand Harbor is likely calling for a three dimensional (3D) solution, rather than two dimensional (2D) solution — that is, think adjusted traffic flow above ground, which allows for a solution that is not only only at ground level.
Obviously, feasibility studies would be important to see what can or should be done. That my two cents, for what it’s worth.
Until Mario Andretti in the gravel truck makes it his mission to become Evil Kneival.
Hilarious analogy, however, Evil Knievel got paid for the attempt (regardless of his rate of success in accomplishing the ultimate aims of the task), whilst this requires more targeted precision with surgical simplicity that, before implementing (ie, pulling the trigger), requires unraveling the Gordian knot by pointing the public policy issues in the right direction of ultimate aims that are to be achieved beneficial to the public interest: see ss.9, 15, 18-19, 24, Bill of Rights read together with s.16(4)(b) of our Bill of Rights.
When is this american mindset that adding more lanes and more roads will solve the traffic problem. The issue to solving traffic bottlenecks is to reducing the number of vehicles on the road by providing accesible alternatives for people and businesses.
* Make other districts besides George Town open to enterprise real estate so that more companies move out of GT and into less congested areas
* provide bicycle lanes and more sidewalks to make the country more accessible to people, not cars.
* provide a reliable and affordable bus service that services all major points of contact in the country, if school busses can do this, there’s no reason public busses can’t.
* Provide access to more reliable and affordable taxi via a taxi program as-well as inviting app-based programs like Uber, Bolt etc to discourage drunk drivers.
I don’t see why we should continue to destroy our beautiful island with a concrete jungle of roads and lanes, when long-term it’ll never solve the solution. Cars should be seen as a flexible option to transportation not a necessity and the government needs to help make that a possibly by giving people more options.
…”American Mindset”! Nice deflection of what is solely a Caymanian problem.
Interesting that you seek to identify a negative American mindset for Caymanian problems, then give examples of solutions that are common to America.
I’m no fan of America (German/Irish), but you want a reality check on a Caymanian Mindset? It is to continually blame everyone else for what the Cayman electorate tolerates, condones and supports.
…”I don’t see why we should continue to destroy our beautiful island”; that I agree with. SO STOP the destruction.
Oh my, that is a logical response 1:02. But the Generational Caymanian power brokers care little to read and think. They are too concerned to sit in their air conditioned, paid for condos and count their money. They have sold out their country.
I’m not trying to deflect, it is a problem that Cayman has yes, but U.S does have a major influence on Cayman’s practices, you just can’t avoid that because of where it’s localised. Compare this with island nations in Europe like Malta, Canary Islands, Ibizia etc. all have a much larger focus on pedestrian accesibility compared to cars and this is primarily because their policy inherets from the larger countries it’s near to.
I’m also not blaming America for the cause of these issues, CIG is squarely to blame here. I’m just saying it is a common practice to solve trafficing issues in America by adding more road and lanes. There’s a huge number of examples of this in america; Houston, Florida, California etc. While also vehemently polarising alternative transportation solutions like high speed rail which has received a crazy amount of news coverage compared to the similiar costing I69 project which has little to no news coverage despite it’s multitude of cost overruns while will eventually prolong rather than fix the issues it aims to fix.
Just to clarify this is to SQUARELY blame on CIG making short sighted decisions similiar to american policy on transporation.
how is this an American problem? my country of birth has wonderful roads and are patrolled by police who enforce all laws. not that I want to be on the us cops side cause they are obviously full of terrible people but they at least patrol the roads to the extent where people drive thousands of times better.
Yes, you can very safely drive to a school and drop off your kids where they can get shot by some psycho known to the feds has a mental history, but is allowed a semi automatic warfare grade weapon.
unnecessary and totally off topic. toxic lawyer I’m guessing
Not off topic at all. It is in response to the ‘American mindset’ of safety
And has nothing to do with this post. However, when that topic comes up I’ll gladly reply to your comment on the relevant article.
And is Cayman so different?
Your country has wonderful roads, no doubt but it stops there. It is a car-centric country that provides very little alternative for people who don’t live in the NEC or SEC. Anyway, this wasn’t an attack on American habits, I’m concerned here that Cayman is taking an American approach to fixing road traffic, which is commonly road expansion when it has been proven time and time again, to prolong the problem not solve it.
Yes, America has gorgeous roads and makes some of the best road trips I’ve ever done, but you somehow miscontrued my statement on attack on american roads. Or an attack on America in general. This is a Cayman issue that needs resolving.
yes it’s was purely done by Caymanians and not influenced by America or wed drive on the other side of the road too.
The roundabouts everywhere prove you wrong. Not really a thing in the US.
They are not adding more roads in Florida for example. they improve their design, build overpasses, ramps, etc. and there is also bus service
“They are not adding more roads in florida” Then you go on to talk about how they’re building ramps and overpasses, right.
On the Florida Department of Transporation website, there’s about 50 road projects involving the expansion of highways and expanding highway capabilities, with only TWO projects focusing on providing commuter services and expanding the south east corrdidor, which is localised to miami-dade county. SW Florida alone has about 20 projects to widen I75 to increase capability.
So yes, they are adding more roads.
Agree, mostly. I think that a comfortable, air-conditioned light rail system is going to be our solution. Yes, profoundly expensive. If we went that way, your solutions could easily be included.
We aren’t going to reduce the sheer number of people here. We should, but we won’t. Reducing the number of cars won’t help; people can only drive one car at a time.
A temporary solution might be carpool lanes, but we are going to have to provide comfortable, quality transportation to get people out of their cars.
another dreamer….They can’t get parking meters working and you are talking about air-conditioned light rail system. This is not Japan.
Maybe they should start with a Public bus system.
Unless Cayman hires another 20K experts/professionals from overseas to built, run and maintain your air-conditioned light rail system (and who said there’s available workforce this kind projects) your solution is just a fantasy.
Great opportunity for landowners to open up the Island and develop their land that they or the forefathers bought for next to nothing.
🙂
Develop or mostly sell. Then complain about furriners buying all their land.
Meanwhile, pvc solar power now costs $0.60-1.30 per watt. Between 2017 and 2022, to much hullabaloo, CUC built the first of 6 planned 22 acre 5MW Solar Farms in Bodden Town for a consumer re-invoiced cost of $100mln. All of these materials were duty free, where the actual real world cost is $3-6.5mln. That’s a government-sanctioned consumer robbery of at least $93.5mln. Any large infrastructure project should raise reasonable suspicion that it is an organised heist being perpetrated on the public.
We in the eastern district will be cut off from going town when a hurricane damage the coast line road. this road that needs to be built everyone knows when we get Town traffic will back up what you need to do is come stay in the eastern district when a hurricane hits the beloved cayman islands just try driving to George Town you won’t get far? That’s one reason why we need a inland road. if a fatal accident occurs the road is closed for the rest of the day or night and you are cut off from your family.
We could do a overhang bridge that goes over the island if your really worried about hurricanes.
This road is 100% for development so contractors/developers can build thousands of homes and condos and sell them to new foreign people coming to cayman.
The Road isn’t going to help traffic when another 50 thousand people live in the eastern district.
Need massive buses like how they shuttle the tourist around from town. Not Mini buses as taxis and public transport.
Building this road is stupid and one with two common scents can figure that out. It’s to start the development on the other side of the island.
If people would drive better accidents could be rare. Hell, if cops would patrol the roads and enforce traffic laws we would be safer on the roads.
After a storm if roads are closed you shouldn’t leave your house. You will not be cut off from the rest of the island because people that are authorized and equipped to deal with debris on the road will come to you.
Accidents happen. Medical, crappy driving whatever the cause…That’s reality, deal with it.
Secondly, if you were here after Ivan you would know how difficult it was for emergency response and utilities repairs to go on because of all the sand blocking the road.
Your reasoning is shallow.
So is your logic. I was here for Ivan.
If humans were robots they would drive safely…unfortunately human errors are inherent, and there are always will be drunk, sick, inexperienced, elderly, beginners whose driving skills differ dramatically.
Like you say, all of which is part of the accepted status quo of settling in East End. Just like getting the sunrise in your eyes.
If you are lucky enough to live in the Eastern district, you are lucky enough. Be glad you won’t have to travel to George Town in an emergency.
Why would you need to drive to George Town when you have a fantastic hospital at East End. Duh!
It wasn’t just East that got hit by Ivan- 89% of the island was affected. The south coast road where much people live got high up in sand too and the road mash up. Obvious fix are the choke points that need done now and improvement to Bodden Town Road and public bus. Hurricanes getting worse, all smoke and mirrors to make a few politicians rich. Coast road or mangrove road, build it right and it will do the job. Just don’t trash our mangroves.
See a lot of people ONLY talking about the Hurleys Roundabout as the bottleneck. Apparently some of you havent left east end at 6 in the morning only to get to GT by 830. There is a HUGE traffic jam from Bodden Town till you get past Savanah.
Indeed. Any traffic from Savannah to GT pales into insignificance in comparison to the BT to Savannah issue – all caused by the side road traffic joining around lower valley.
BT to Savannah – often 90 minutes or more.
Savannah to GT – usually 30-40 minutes.
Why don’t you live somewhere else if that is your concern.
you could literally say that about ANYWHERE if you are upset about traffic. Mad it takes so long to get to Camana Bay, then live at Camana Bay. Real nice empathy you have there. (Rolls Eyes)
This EWA is a stupid idea.
An actual professional bus service, plus park and ride schemes in BT and Savannah, would go a long way to fixing many issues.
One thing that would still require fixing is the unsuitability of Shamrock Road as a main road. It’s frequently too narrow, one crash paralyzes half the island in some points, it’s driven on by many an idiot…and so on. It needs areas for safe, sane overtaking, or you can be stuck behind a vehicle doing 25mph from Countryside to Frank Sound. Unfortunately, this would require some compulsory purchase orders, but that’s got to be easier than a whole new road!
Is this person lives in the east end distric? Is he has to wake his child up every morning at 4:30 am so they can be at school and work for 8:00am?
How feels it knows it.
Kevin Kay really screwed up. Anyone who could possibly gain from this project is always going to look for language or references that the experts have no idea what they’re talking about by not understanding the nuances and dynamics to a certain jurisdiction. This is obviously the case with Mr Kay’s perspective of Cayman by including in his report “they should also include a benefit-cost ratio of the project and whether or not it “confers sufficient value-for-money to justify its implementation” 💸💸
Traffic would flow a lot better if the police did their job by ticketing drivers who do not indicate their turns/intentions. How many times have you sat at a roundabout waiting for a car to come around and they turn off to the left! it is an offence not to indicate your turns. Traffic would flow better and it is an easy fix. Have the police set up at various roundabouts throughout the island during peak hours AND off peak at least 1-2 times a week, and issue TiCKETS – not warnings. Imagine the revenue Govt can collect from that offence alone! We don’t need more roads, we just need drivers to follow the laws and for those laws to be ENFORCED.
Well the raised the dead to widen the road at Grand Harbor, now they intend cars to drive over water. We have some people in power that only wish to use their power for their own benefits mostly indirectly through connections. If this road is built, generations to come will suffer for the lack of foresight by our leaders. Just alone of messing with the island’s ecological for a handful of land owners and a fistful of dollars, makes me want to cry and beg the question, why? This road will and is not going to alleviate the traffic congestion.
Pretty sure we need more roads east of newlands When im pulling into stop and go traffic at 6:30am at the top of beach bay road trying to go town.
I sat in a stop and go train of traffic from the Crighton home to lower valley so I’m sure this will help for our ride home.
“The independent report shows that the real cause of the congestion is the funnel effect around Grand Harbour”. Can we also get an independent report to look into if the sea is wet?
Can we pay them extra to confirm or deny that fish fart underwater?
What are you actually hoping for with this comment? Do you understand who commissioned it? Do you appreciate the risk of dismissing it?
I read an article a while back about Chinese factory workers at a loss as to why western society really wanted them to make all the useless s*** they did, ultimately as long as we wanted it, they’d make it. This commissioned report reminds me a little of that, – ‘do they really need us to tell them it won’t work ?’ 🤦🏽♀️
This EWA is the proverbial cart before the horse. How long does it take to plan, design, build and implement a first world Bus Depot with routes serving the whole island? One that people will want to give up driving their vehicles for.
All the duty moneys raised from car imports over the last 30 years went where instead of provisioning for such critical infrastructure needed now? The money always get squandered, misappropriated.
Start this fund now, and jack up duty rates on vehicle imports, road tax and licence fees. Someone has to pay but our politicians clearly haven’t paid the price instead they’ve failed and cleaned up in the process.
So many cars with workers that do almost all of their work on a computer could be made remote workers with minimal cost and effort and much quicker than buses or roads, removing thousands of autos from the daily debacle that grows worse by the day.
It would help not just the traffic, but also the environment, if everyone who can work remotely is mandatorily required to work at least 2 days a week from home. Make it a law that employees rotate working from home 2-3 days a week. Offices can save costs by having smaller office spaces as at any given time half of the employees would work from home on rotation basis.
I’d add that the public and private sector employers have failed miserably in introducing staggered work times for staff. This really works people, I’ve done it and a host of others have as well. The traffic flow is greatly improved out of peak traffic times.
Remote workers will still want to own a car. You can’t even get to the grocery store/ hardware store or pick up your mail here with out a reliable set of wheels. Check Bermuda, they’ve had a real National transportation system for decades and vehicle restrictions to alleviate congestion to boot.
Owning a car and when you use it are two separate things. I have a 18 year old car owned from new with 30k on the clock.
Bermuda offers the wrong mental templates for many of our worst adopted ideas, such as rollover. And still, there is thick traffic backed up in and out of Hamilton. Different terrain. No sidewalks. Even the C-suite execs ride scooters (albeit finer ones) to get where they need to go. Everyone has a big wipe out sooner or later too.
Agreed. Bermuda provides examples merely of how to regress.
Singapore should be our role model.
Raising import duty on cars is only going to incentivize the gov to allow more cars (more revenue)!
Closed this rubbish down NOW!! Cayman no good will come of this pure profit making for the destroyers of this island time to 🛑 this shite !
In my opinion there are two main sources of eastern district traffic. The first is the geographical bottleneck at grand harbour made worst by the ad hoc development on both sides of the road in the area from tropical gardens to red bay. The second issue is that the majority of the main road from grand harbor east is lined with houses that would have to give up land to accommodate wider roads and public transport infrastructure.
Either the grand harbour stretch needs to be re engineered or more land needs to be reclaimed in the sound and have a road run north of grand harbor connecting the newlands bypass to industrial park (a traffic crap show in itself).
The EWA is probably the right move for redundancy but it’s not going to significantly reduce the traffic issue from my humble perspective. *(As evidenced by this report)
Unfortunately CIG promoting EWA as solution to commute times was disingenuous. But it’s CIG what do you expect? That said even a broken clock is right twice a day and they might actually be right about building this road, just wrong about it reducing traffic. No one with sense can possibly think that having one road on the coast to access the eastern districts is robust planning.
As a medium term immediate intervention, we could look to only allow private vehicles on the road (i.e not including police.school bus.ambulance/etc) on certain days according to the license registration –
M-W-F – ODD NUMBERS
T-T – EVEN
and rotate each week.
Why not? its done in loads of places
Singapore and Dehli… Loads of place?
They tried this in Sao Paulo. People just made sure they had two vehicles, one ending in odd and one ending in even.
… “medium term immediate intervention.” Oh there is a nice term. I’d love a Caymanian Minister to give a thought to a definition??? Waiting ???? Waiting ?????
Are you nuts?
carpool lanes and congestion charge would work better
Alphabet days by surname! But what days would the Bodden-Ebanks’s be allowed to drive on? It’s all so confusing!
The wrong political choices can hardly ever lead to the correct results.
Our car-dependent status quo is the result of political choices that have steered decades of financial-, spatial- & design decisions. Let’s repoliticize these decisions that shape our public spaces.
THE FANTASY. Population growth at the scale proposed could result in substantial destruction, degradation and fragmentation of our protective ecosystems – resulting in reduced quality of life, health and safety.
STOP unsustainable development!
Thoughts? 🤔
🟢Protect our environment
🟠Halt overexpansion
🔴Stop duplicity
Plenty of comparisons have been done with Bermuda. What can be learned from Singapore? They have a significantly greater population density and continue to grow rapidly. What is their success formula?
Cayman Population- 78,554 (2021 Wikipedia)
Total area- 264 km sq
Density- 244/km sq
Singapore Population- 5,637,000 (2022 est Wikipedia)
Total area- 733.1 km sq
Density- 7804/km sq !
If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.
To add to this- it was about 100 years ago when the population density of Singapore was similar to what it is in Cayman today.
What has Singapore done to maintain a functioning and efficient society in the past 100 years as it has grown to the incredible density it is today.
What can one learn from the island nation?
What blocks (inner and outer) did they have to work through to open up the creative and enduring solutions?
Did they become masters of road building?
Were they astute master planners of neighborhoods and districts?
Were they visionary in their public transportation initiatives?
Who were their leaders? What were their backgrounds?
Where along their journey did they learn and practise radical acceptance of what is and what will be?
What is the long term vision for Cayman? Thinking beyond the election cycle. 1, 2, 3 generations out.
I had similar thoughts and did some research a while back. There is a lot but the main difference I found is they are close enough to mainland to have a highway. Additionally they made concerted efforts to raise the quality of their politicians and the quality of education of the public. I agree with you in theory that we could learn a lot from Singapore that could be tailored to our circumstances but as long we can only import goods via plane or ships fueled by diesel it’s going to put a limit on how competitive we can be internationally in terms of manufacturing things like microchips or getting into biotech. This place has no real export potential beyond whatever can be mined from the intellect of our future generations for example AI programmers, tele physicians, architects. Trades where products and services aren’t dependent on access to physical inputs. Designers managers consultants analysts etc. just my humble opinion
What questions do you have?
The NRA Public Meeting is in Northside this evening at the Craddock Ebanks Civic Centre starting @ 6pm. You can watch the live feed or attend in person to find out more.
https://youtu.be/Hyw3BhNdjrg
IMPORTANT that each person submits their comments via the process outlined in the NCC Directive.
These comments are to be appended to the final terms of reference and can be emailed to DOE@GOV.KY.
There are 3 alternatives defined in the scoping opinion which the EIA will need to consider:- (1) Building the gazetted Road; (2) No Build; and (3) Improving the Bodden Town Road connector and associated infrastructure.
The report provides an opinion which has been echoed for decades.
Have your Say!
Point he makes on the school traffic can’t be emphasized enough. Everyone can tell the difference at Christmas and the summer when parents are not on the road getting the kids to school for 8am. Mandating safe, consistent and timely bus routes to/from all the schools (private and public) would certainly reduce the vehicles on the road and allow all traffic to run more smoothly at those peak times. Benefits would be increased if there were dedicated bus/carpool lanes.
A bus program, even if funded entirely by the government, would be far less than the capital outlay to build and maintain this massive extension. But then all that land out there wouldn’t finally be worth something….
And it’s the last sentence that is the real reason for the road.
Our congested roundabouts need to be replaced with lights.
Lights are more efficient for peak traffic. Roundabouts for even flow. Lights are also better for cyclists and pedestrians which we want to encourage.
NRA should be running the traffic volume through a simulator and seeing where switching to a set of lights would help. I expect that would be Grand Harbour and next to ALT.
Otherwise, we need a massive fly-over roundabout at Grand Harbour.
You make a good point, but we could have the best of both putting lights for roundabout entry at peak times
Yes – traffic will stil gridlock at Grand Harbour going in to town.
But for those people living in EE and NS they would no longer be stuck in traffic at 7:30pm on Spotts stretch and the Newlands by-pass!
Did you read the report 🤔
While I have no suggestions to fix the road, that is above my paygrade and I don’t want to get a migraine trying to figure what experts can’t. I will say this, I live in Beach Bay , trying to get on the main road around 7:30 when I usually leave home, is a nightmare. Traffic is bumper to bumper,.i guess the persons coming from Bodden Town Northside and East End have been on the road too long to give me a break to join the bumper to bumper, they just pretend they don’t see me. I get it!, but I digress. Anyway I manage to squeeze out eventually and it is slow-going until I reach the roundabout east of Grand Harbour where it gradually gets a bit better, it is still slow but moving. I don’t have really have any issues with the “Grand Harbour funnel- my problem is getting to that point. I think the experts have latched on to Grand Harbour and the brains stop functioning after that. .
what they don’t build the planned beach bay coast road to connect to Savannah/Pedro?
Opaque authorities, departments and SAGCs are exactly where our politicians can skim their retirement fund. It’s just a simple re-invoicing spread with no genuine scrutiny. That’s why they are always wanting to pave or build something expensive. How many times did we fully-pay for John Gray over the decades? New planes. New airport. New cargo/cruise port. Secret deals galore with big concessions and no security or performance criteria. Follow the money. So easy a school-leaver can do it.
It will be interesting to see if the Govt will entertain a ‘not the best option’ possibility from the EIA report or if they are going to restrict the EIA to ‘how to build the road’ since the decision to build has already been taken without any of the business case or other justification analysis (like this private report) that Government normally like to acquire.
The King’s roundabout entrance to Crewe road should be closed in the morning. Everyone going west should take the highway.
This is resulting in one single lane of traffic unnecessarily merging further up by Jose’s and pushes everything back.
First of all, if you are taking Traffic advise from a British firm you have already lost the battle.
Why?
Makes perfect sense, we drive on the left BoBo
Advice
And we know how to use roundabouts correctly
Why? The UK has massively higher traffic that flows at much higher rates. It is not perfect, but the biggest difference is that most UK drivers actually know how to drive in heavy traffic
British People Drive on the left as well. this comment dont make sense.
Who is running the government?
Catron.
Country is being run by, Mac , Jay, Saunders , Seymour and Kenneth Jamaican woters.
Didn’t you know that.?
What depresses me most, is this was sanctioned and is clearly a very sensible report – even if the commenters are stating the recommendations are obvious. What saddens me is it doesn’t matter what the report says, this is going ahead and really doesn’t need to.
And those who think it is the solution to our traffic, will be the most vocally outraged at arriving to Grand Harbour a whole 5 minutes earlier to then sit in traffic for longer.
I am honestly lost for words
Make it make sense.
So you really think that a single thin road going throuh Bodden Town is enough to supply the entire Eastern Part of the island. Even when there is a light accident it can take 3-4 hours to reach George Town. Then we get fatal accidents where the only road gets CLOSED! If you live in the Eastern Districts and suffer in hours of traffic in the morning you know a thin little road should not be the only option
People are under a seductive delusion that building new things is the cause of their problems. This means they will protest everything like the dock, restoring the beach, the highway, higher buildings, etc etc etc. There is no logic to it other than the people voting against it don’t see how they immediately get a handout from government. In the past, these same people would have protested the building of schooners, the construction of the dike roads, the building of the financial services industry and any development on the beach for some crazy reason. However, back then no-one listened to them. The reason all those things happened is that the original Caymanians had a lot of common sense, partly because they had to deal with the difficulties of going away to sea and scraping a living from a bare rock in the ocean.
Don’t worry about the EWA man. Adding another 30K plus residents should just about fix ALL of our problems in a jiffy. Right?
free money making solutions:
Sell goab and build new goab east of frank sound.
or
bring in car-pool lanes and congestion charge for single occupancy vehicles that come through hurleys roundabout morning or evening peak times.
the dogs in the street know this…
Let me state the obvious. The EW arterial extension is not being built for Caymanians but for politicians and foreign investors. Until they do something about the grand harbour area we will still spend half our day stuck in traffic!
Straight in the with the ‘poor us.’ Most landowners around there are Caymanian. Once the parcels have roads, watch them sell out. You can only buy what people are willing to sell sweetie. But yeah, boo hoo.
No shit, Sherlock. How much did we pay for that blatantly obvious analysis?
CNS: You paid nothing. It was commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Cayman, as made clear in the article and on the document itself.
obviously! but enforcement of traffic laws would actually help.
Duh
no no no we want the road as have lots of land in there that we need to get developed.
Good grief. Talk about stating the obvious.
This report will be thrown in the bin anyway. Important people want their landlocked parcel unlocked.
And that doesn’t include just Caymanian landowners. Remember the group that wanted another helipad approval in north side ?
If not Dart, Important people = ??
MPs are important people- beware the quiet ones…
and no one mentions….”In the future”.
You build today for tomorrow. Building today for yesterday or today for today. you are already too late.
Everyone knows this, including PACT. But they will push it through for their personal interests and those of theirs friends.
It took another indy consultation paper to see that the funnel and choke point is Grand Harbour?! Seriously, this is comedy at this stage
A bridge is the only solution that will work, and reclaim land in the basin of the north sound while we’re at it. Ignore the environmental naysayers, they’re living in a country with its highest point being a dump, they’re not particularly aware.
start form hirst road/tarpin island area….fill in loads of alnd too to create more land for housing and industrial..its called forward long term planning
A bridge to the airport/cuc/ind park area, with a spoke to the new road around the dump into the health city/dump roundabout.
money is no object for this, its costly now, but cheap in the long run.
just do it. ffs…caymanians are never giving up their cars and we’ll never take busses anywhere, and the taxi mafia will never give up their cartel…just do it
they also need to REQUIRE ALL schools use school buses, public and PRIVATE. This is the easiest fix of all. Traffic is always SO much better when school is out.
Remote work will further help this road congestion hell
Release the Grand Harbour report!
Totally agree, flyover at the Hurley’s roundabout and a causeway to the dump bypass over north sound. job done.
Where can we find the report?
CNS: In the CNS Library. The link is at the bottom of the article.
On a dusty shelf in the basement of the Glasshouse.
In the bin next to Caymans environment
Actually on the ground next to the bin so the weedwackers and mowers can shred it