Roads with high volumes of traffic selected for iRAP project

Roads selected for evaluation under the recently launched International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) for Barbados, were chosen based on the volume of traffic they have to endure on a daily basis.

 

Nash Lovell, Deputy Chief Technical Officer responsible for Projects in the Ministry of Transport and Works, revealed the above as he spoke with members of the media following the iRAP project launch held yesterday at the Pine Basin in St. Michael.

 

The Mexican subcontracted firm, Servicios Mexicanos de Ingenieria Civil (SEMIC), has already started collecting data by surveying approximately 500 kilometres of the local road network in Barbados, as part of the iRAP exercise and Lovell indicated that all main highways will be included.

 

“The choice of roads was based on the volume of traffic, the average daily traffic of over 2 000 vehicles a day, though we may have as many times over as 5 000 vehicles a day,” he stated.

 

Lovell noted that engineers and technicians in the Ministry of Transport and Works will be trained to code the data captured during the road evaluation project, so that they can continue to do so in the future.

 

“This will lead to safety improvements, in terms of interventions which may be called low-hanging fruit-type interventions, such as adding a sidewalk here and widening a curve here and there to make roads safer and to get rid of sideswipe accidents that occur,” Lovell also revealed.

 

This, he said, will redound to almost 20 times the savings in safety costs and vulnerable road users will also be protected, based on a more scientific approach. (RSM)