Road safety to be boosted with erection of street, traffic lights

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Georgetown : Significant sums have been approved by the National Assembly to be spent on the installation of street lights and traffic lights. The Ministry of Public Infrastructure will be expending $72M for lighting the highways at Linden, Coverden, Corentyne and Ogle. 

A pedestrian sidewalk at Corriverton will be constructed to improve road safety. Further $1.1M will be spent to replace 37 high pressure sodium vapour street lamps, $1.4M will be expended to install 65 LED street lamps, and 300 defective photo sensors on street lights will be replaced at a cost of $18.2M.

These investments form part of the Ministry’s initiative to ensure that adequate road safety measures are in place countrywide.

The 2016 budget also has an allocation of $28.6M for the installation of traffic lights.

Areas such as the vicinity of CARICOM Building; 5-Corner Junction in Linden; and Corriverton, among others, are being examined for the installation of traffic lights to improve the areas along highways and junctions considered vulnerable to accidents.

 

A new traffic light at Bel Air and the Embankment road was also installed in 2015 and will be commissioned this month. To date, there are 51 traffic lights in Georgetown. Most importantly, persons with disabilities are catered for and sound devices have been installed to notify pedestrians when it is safe to cross.

 

In 2015, the Ministry ramped up on its road safety efforts and placed more barriers and road signs along the main access roads and around Georgetown

These projects are in conjunction with the measures in the Budget to restrict the importation of used or reconditioned vehicles to under eight years old from the date of manufacture to the date of importation. They also support the ban on importation of used tyres which will further boost road safety in Guyana.