NRA cuts exit options at Grand Harbour roundabout
(CNS): As part of ongoing efforts to reduce traffic congestion for commuters who live east of George Town, the National Roads Authority (NRA) is making changes to the Century 21 (Grand Harbour) Roundabout so that drivers exiting the shopping area can only turn left and must use the roundabout at Red Bay to make a U-Turn. This will also prevent commuters from Selkirk Drive from cutting their commute time by using the shortcut into Bimini Drive and through Hurley’s car park to get to the roundabout in the mornings.
In a press release about the proposed change, which will be implemented on 5 June, officials said the restriction is for safety reasons as well as the functionality of this significant bottle-neck.
Drivers exiting Grand Harbour at the roundabout will no longer be able to turn right onto South Sound or Crewe Road. Instead, they will have to travel east along Shamrock Road and circle the next roundabout, then head west and back towards Hurley’s, where they will be able to pull off onto South Sound Road or cross the roundabout onto Crewe Road.
“As an urgent safety concern, the NRA has decided that it would be in the best interest of the public to close off the westbound right turn from Grand Harbour around the Century 21 Roundabout. Once the Edgewater Connector is complete, the NRA will revisit this decision,” NRA MD Edward Howard said.
With the number of cars on our roads ever increasing and with the congestion seen on a daily basis in the area, the decision to close this lane of the roundabout was made to improve public safety and reduce the risk of collision, the NRA release stated.
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Category: Local News
The elephant in the room, as ever, is the pathetic, 3rd world standard of driving. Until you stop giving licenses to anyone with a pulse you’ll never fix the underlying problem. Anyone who finds a roundabout difficult to negotiate safely shouldn’t be allowed to drive! Oh and a proper bus network has the potential to remove hundreds if not thousands of car journeys a day from our roads.
To be honest this really has ZERO to do with safety. It’s just crafted that way to TRY to make it palatable.
This is about cars going through Grand Harbor from Selkirk to join traffic at the Grand Harbor roundabout. I knew it was coming when I saw the traffic data cables in that area.
These cars slow the progression of cars from Eastern District through the roundabout to town.
If this is not to solve that then it’s even stupider than I thought.
When you fix issues like this you never do it at top first or in the middle. You need flow to be robust at the bottom and then you move backwards (up the line) releasing traffic.
What this move does is only to shift weight from one spot to another.
In this move two parties are losing.
1. All the businesses and residences in the Grand Harbor/Selkirk area. One intended one not so much.
2. People from Prospect area as now the traffic going into the Red Bay roundabout just double or tripled and these poor people are last in priority at the roundabout.
To me and most on here this is simply put a STUPID idea. And basically a guaranteed lost in the next elections by PACT in that area.
We suffer from too many cars and simply not enough road. There could be fixes for these but they will be unconventional.
1. A Bus Station out of town. Buy a large piece of land and create a bus terminal lets say on Ocean Club Straight on landside. Create a bus terminal that leaves out every 15 minutes with a huge parking lot. FREE TRANSPORT TO TOWN. Dedicate a lane for these busses to town. The fact that these busses can somewhat bypass traffic would create an incentive to grab the bus. Also less gas being used. Buy some high end big busses for this.
We have a billion dollar budget. A modern, efficient, regular, 24/7, reliable, clean, safe, GPS tracked, island wide FREE bus service would cost a tiny fraction of the budget. No ridiculous little 3rd world vans. Better yet, charge us car drivers an annual fee for the bus service. We drivers will benefit from fewer cars on the road and those people who struggle to afford a car will benefit from free, reliable public transport. Win, win.
And then make all the drivers third world. lose, lose. This is why the bus service does not work now and nothing will ever change in this regard. Basically Cayman will never have a functional mass transit system because it does not deserve it.
Tbe Wall Street Journal reported that workers in the states on hybrid remote work schedules save an average of $18 per week. I dare say with the costs of living much greater here, that workers could save even more.
But let’s spend money on making our commutes worse.
Make it make sense!
Let me start by saying I swear these guys are working for or paid off by the gas companies.
What is wrong with this approach?
Its stupid to try fix a problem at the top or in the middle.
The eastern districts problems start much further down by the Jacques Scott lights and down Elgin. You need fix and move up the line not top down.
When you pull this bs move all that happens is you push the problem to the Red Bay round a bout. Now everyone from Prospect will be late for work.
Also everyone from Selkirk and your fancy developments behind Grand Harbour.
Nothing you do at Grand Harbour fixes the issue because eventually the cars need go somewhere and there is no place downline for them.
What will happen is a momentary relief but soon the cars will be coming from East faster than town can process them and now the backup will extend well past Grand Harbour back towards Ocean Club straight.
This manuever is a waste of time and more than likely creates more problems than it fixes.
Dear government. Want to do something for the working folks? You know, the people who get up each day and go to work and make sure the island functions?
Fix the roads.
Duh…
moving back instead of forward, seems to me absurd.
And justice for all commuters
But that is the way Cayman has always worked.
Anyone advocating for us to copy US road layouts needs to first explain why they think it’s a good idea to copy one of the least safe road networks in the 1st world.
The US accident stats per capita AND per distance driven are MULTIPLE TIMES WORSE than the UK and Northern Europe’s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Downvote if you couldn’t pass a standard UK driving test if your life depended on it.
It’s telling that none of the downvotes have managed to articulate a single reason why we should copy the demonstrably inferior US crossroad.
I think this roundabout could benefit from a traffic light at peak hours.
Agreed. And no ridiculous bollards.
Roundabouts and traffic lights do not play well with each other. Get educated!
Absolute made up nonsense. Lights have been successfully used for decades on very high traffic roundabouts in the UK. The UK has one of the lowest traffic accident rates in the world. The roundabout helps reduce the severity of accidents compared to crossroads and the lights help keep traffic moving during periods of high congestion. Furthermore you can turn the lights off outside of rush hour and have it function normally.
Put in an overpass???
Do you know why roundabouts aren’t used everywhere? It’s because they SUCK……. and they cause too much delay…. and they cost too much.
Learn how to drive, moron.
You’re the moron!
Roundabouts DO work if a) they are designed properly and b) people use them correctly. We already know they are not used correctly and people have to be forced by all those poles, to stay in the correct lane. They don’t need to do that in other countries – people get in the correct lane, they indicate and they don’t swerve from one lane to another. We also know that the designs are SO complicated that they don’t stand a chance of working.
Sounds like you are an inept driver. They work just fine in Europe where they have a tenth of the crashes and deaths we do despite terrible weather and much faster speeds.
The roundabout building rules: they should never be built on main roads. Secondary, two lane roads are fine.
They are a very poor choice for any road!
And yet amazingly they’re used in all the safest countries by RTA… maybe, just maybe, it’s not the road layout that sucks but your basic motor skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Only the fools who enter and block already full roundabouts (often in the wrong lane and not using indicators) cause all the delays. Otherwise they would work as intended.
I live in Prospect. I stop at Grand Harbour in the mornings to pick up breakfast and coffee on the way to work in GT.
Now I would have to drive back towards my house, in the wrong direction just to sit in traffic again??
No problem. I’ll just stop shopping at Grand Harbor.
OK..?
This may come as a shocker, but the NRA is trying to balance mild inconveniences to you in exchange for dozens of people getting to work faster.
it will not work. just mean people fron prospect will get to work at 10am
Was never designed to be a bypass and look at all the development going in by Tomlinson . They need to implement 4 ways stops if the roundabouts are really the issue and get sidewalks and crossings for the pedestrians. It is better to have traffic move slowly as opposed to fast, weave, slow and accelerate (sometimes over the roundabout) as this creates accidents ALL THE TIME here and will result in only more deaths as cars whizz crazily to spin back west.
Thanks for letting us know.
I live pretty close to the intersection of old crewe road and south sound road and I think it would be more convenient and faster to go to Kirk’s rather than Grand Harbour
The correct solution is a new roundabout by Selkirk but do carry on.
Please… no more roundabouts!
I second that, Mr. Anonymous.
I agree! Please….. NO MORE Roundabouts!
Please no more licenses for idiots who can’t negotiate a simple roundabout!
Or, learn how to drive. They work great in the 1st world.
Can we just put in a mono rail in and call it a day?
Got $4.0 billion sitting about , sure ting.
Look up the cost of building a monorail per mile, add in the Cayman Islands surcharge to build anything here, then add the annual maintenance costs on a small island in a caustic salt water environment and then the cost of staffing and administrating the system (including the new Cayman Islands Rail Authority or some such nonsense), the cost of land purchase for stations and parking, the building of the stations and parking lots and let us know what you come up with. Then calculate the relatively low number of people who would use use the system (because, well, they need their cars during the day and don’t actually want to walk from their parked cars to the station or from the station to where they work, or be seen on something as common as public transportation). Then come up with the cost of how much such a system would have to charge for a ride, based on cost and predicted usage, for such a system to break even. Just working some rough figures in my head and I estimate it would cost more then most people earning in a month just to get to and from work during that month using the monorail system. Still think it’s a good idea, George?
Designing, building, running, maintaining and repairing any technology complex mode of transportation starts with expertise and skilled labor in each of these areas. Cayman has none whatsoever.
Yup. Cayman has none of the requisite skills.
The bus service that is in place right now doesn’t work for the same reason.
a mono rail is not a functional mode of transportation
Lyle Lanely “Well sir,there’s nothing on Earth like a genuine,bona-fide,electrified,six car monorail!!!!
“So in conclusion, mono means one and rail means rail”
I’ve sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum I’ve put them on the map!
Monorail becomes a moving target for a Honda Fit or a Voxy.
It’ll cost $1bn more than budgeted, break down after 6 months and like the weather radar be out of action 75% of the time. People who can’t build and run a proper bus service can’t build and run a mono rail either. It would be cheaper to buy everyone who lives east of Hurleys a jet pack.