PM Outlines Extensive Work Being Done to Improve Road Conditions

Prime Minister, Dr. the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, says the Government continues to undertake extensive and transformative work to improve road conditions, enhance connectivity and provide safer and more efficient travel for citizens. 

“In the previous decade, so let’s say between 2006 to 2016, on average, the Government would have spent something like $8 billion to $20 billion annually on roads and that would include some amount of emergency repairs,” he noted. 

“In the last decade, 2016 to now, the Government is spending somewhere in the region of $25 billion to $75 billion on road repairs. Even if you were to take out inflation, this is still a significant amount of resources that the Government is spending on roads. In fact, the Government in the last decade has increased spending on roads more than threefold,” he said. 

The Prime Minister was speaking at the launch of the Main Road component of the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) Programme on Thursday (July 2) at Jamaica House in St. Andrew.  

SPARK is a $45-billion infrastructure programme to modernise more than 600 roads islandwide and represents a major intervention by the Government to address decades of underinvestment in the public thoroughfare.  

The Government has earmarked $25 billion to rehabilitate 37 priority roads under the Main Road component of the SPARK Programme.  

The Prime Minister said Jamaica is spending just about two per cent to 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on roads. 

“If we’re going to make an impact, we probably need to be spending more like three per cent to five per cent of our GDP on roads… .  But the good thing about spending on roadways is that it helps productivity. It helps to create growth and that’s why we are making the investment as we are, these massive investments in our roadways, because they increase productivity, which will improve growth, which will give us the funds to reinvest in the infrastructure,” he pointed out.  

He noted that it would cost approximately $5 trillion to $7 trillion to repair the country’s 21,000 kilometres of road to the various standards 

“So, in other words, we would need to use the National Budget for about five years and do nothing else. No school, no hospital, no police, no security, no pension, no public-sector workers’ salaries, no social programmes. So, we would have to forego everything for five years to make an impact. I’m just saying this for the public to understand the magnitude of the problem that we face. In fact, I think this is the first administration that is really trying to grapple with all dimensions of this problem, and to deal with it in a meaningful way that will actually transform roads,” he said. 

Additionally, he said the development of the One Road Authority will address the governance issue as it relates to roads and bring them up to the standards that the public would want. 

He said the development of the One Road Authority aims to return standards to road construction, to return standards to road maintenance, to ensure there is a budget for road maintenance that matches the economic and engineering life of the road, so that there can also be a preventive maintenance programme. 

“But more importantly, that there is a regulator and someone who will supervise road construction, road maintenance, and preventive work. In addition to that, an Authority that has the legal powers to prosecute road users who destroy the national public assets in our roads by improper use or deliberate destruction and that’s the whole purpose of the One Road Authority,” he said. 

He said that is being worked on and Minister with responsibility for Works, Hon. Robert Morgan, has been tasked to have that delivered by early next year. 

“As you know, there is a long process towards establishing an institution, developing the legislation, passing it through parliament, and getting it done, but I think we can get it done. So, if we can address the governance issue as it relates to roads, then I think we would be 50 per cent of the way to seeing how we can repair all our critical roads and bring them up to the standards that the public would want,” he said. 

Additionally, he said an inventory of the country’s road assets is ongoing.