Traveling on the Philip Goldson Highway between Ladyville and Belize City? Leaving Home Earlier Will Help During Road Repairs Starting Wednesday
On Wednesday, the Philip Goldson Highway will undergo the first phase of six-month-long repairs at two sections. The work will undoubtedly create traffic bottlenecks, especially during the peak hours for those who commute to and from work and home using those areas. Today New Five spoke with the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing’s Engineering Coordinator, Evondale Moody, who said that engineers expect there will be traffic bottlenecks at the roundabout, particularly during the morning and evening rush as motorists try to get home from work. He advises that earlier travel than usual would help.
Evondale Moody
Evondale Moody, Engineering Coordinator, M.I.D.H.
“These two projects basically involve one, the rehabilitation of the round-about round-a-bout, located at the Benny’s Apartments and Reimer’s Feed Mill, that is settling. We have a project for that where we want to install piles at that round-a-bout to create a permanent solution to the settlement of the round-about itself. The idea is that we will drive piles to create a foundation so that we could reach refusal in terms of the piles itself and then create a beam and pile system whereby we will then re-concrete the running surface for the round-about itself. The second project that we want to implement is the removal of the differential settlement that has been occurring on the Philip Goldson Highway between miles three point five and the Haulover Bridge itself, whereby we have differential settlement in the pavement and this is mainly due to the poor geo-technical strata that is under the road pavement itself. From the ground investigation that we have done in the past, we’ve from those results that we have approximately forty to forty-five feet of peat, which is basically organic material, so every year or year and a half, you’ll notice from previous years gone that that road section would go through some settlement and that is what we refer to as differential settlement. So the idea is for us to improve that two point five kilometer section to make it more drivable for motorists and that’s only a temporary measure that we’re doing at this current point in time. We expect that within another year, year and a half, we will look at a permanent solution, which is piling that entire two point five kilometer section but because that will be so costly for us, we have had preliminary discussions with some funding agencies including CABEI, where we’re trying to get funding for us to implement a more permanent solution to that section of the road. Our idea is to have a very good traffic management plan in place by both contractors. Leave at least twenty minutes ahead of schedule; definitely that will help.”
The permanent solution that Moody speaks of would be to drive concrete piles into the bedrock and rebuild the road over them – an undertaking that would cost a pretty penny in the tens of millions just for that portion of the highway that spans less than two miles. The contractors are Peck Engineering will work on the Round-about and Tycrob and Son Limited will work on the section between the round-about and the Haulover Bridge.
