by DONNA SEALY

THE WIDENING of the ABC Highway will not be completed by its weekend deadline, but Government is promising it will be finished in the "shortest time possible".

"Regrettably, the project will not now be completed by May 24," said Minister of Transport, Works and International Transport John Boyce on Sunday, "and I will have the ignominious duty of having to introduce that delay to the Cabinet".

"We're going to close that out, we're going to be tough about time, we're going to be tough about the spending of our money and we're going to make sure that that highway expansion project comes to an end in the shortest time possible and at the least cost. Everyone knows what the cost is – $117 million; that project has haunted Barbadians," he said after reminding the audience at a meeting of the Democratic Labour Party's St George South branch, at South District Primary School in South District, he had been the minister for only four months now.

And there is still no word on if one flyover or any at all will be built along the expanded highway running from the Garfield Sobers Roundabout in Christ Church to the D'Arcy Scott Roundabout in Warrens, St Michael.

"We said we would put the whole question of flyovers out for re-consideration by the consultants, to examine to what extent the flyover would solve the additional problem of traffic flows in the east-west direction," said Boyce.

"We continue to have a level of gridlock in the east-west direction. In other words, people from South District going into Bridgetown on mornings have an awful queue-up past Trimart and all the way up Mapp Hill and as a result there are these large diversions.

"This is replicated at the Hothersal junction coming from Bibby's Lane and Jackson, at the Warrens [junction) coming from the north and coming again from Jackson and at all the roundabouts, Highway 7 by Top Rock and that is nothing to do with the Highway . . . .

"I do believe that unless we start to look to solve the problem of the situation of the movement of this east-west traffic, the flyover solution will not contribute as much to an overall traffic gridlock solution as we would expect," said Boyce.

The minister added that if $150 million was to be spent on flyovers, he and the Government believed that "it should be a tried and tested solution" which would bring about a solution.

Boyce also said that at the "11th hour" there was still no "definitive position" on cross-overs for pedestrians on the highway.