TRANSPORT Minister, Robert Pickersgill, is expected to announce next week, a six-member body that will effectively become the 'Toll Authority', the entity established within the legislation to regulate the new toll road system, says Kingsley Thomas, head of the agency administering the project.
The Minister can appoint up to eleven persons, said Thomas, chairman of the National Road Operating and Construction Company (NROCC), but he is expected to keep the numbers at six, at the outset.
The move reverses earlier plans last enunciated at the end of June by the NROCC chairman to pattern the authority off the Malaysian model where the grantor of the concession in this case NROCC would also be the toll regime's regulator, much in the same way that the Office of Utilities Regulation for instance is the watchdog for the entities it licenses.
However, some of the responsibilities of the Toll Authority "will devolve to NROCC," Thomas said, most notably the technical oversight and monitoring of the toll road, he told the Financial Gleaner.
Messages left with the Minister's office for comment on the plans for the authority, toll regulator and the toll fees elicited no response.
The NROCC chairman also said the authority will have its secretariat in the Ministry.
The Toll Authority, according to the act, is meant to be self financing and constituted as a 'body corporate'. Its functions include: regulating the operation and maintenance of toll roads and adjacent facilities; monitoring the concessionaire's compliance with the terms and conditions of concession agreements; and advising the Minister on matters of general policy.
The Malaysian technical team that arrived here last month has been advising the NROCC how it should interface with toll operator, TransJamaican Highway and its network once the toll system is operational.
"We have systems to do that, but they are fine-tuning the monitoring mechanisms," said the NROCC chairman.
In addition, Pickersgill is expected to name a Toll Regulator from among "three to four names being considered."
The chief executive of National Works Agency, a position now held by Ivan Anderson, was originally identified as the Toll Regulator, but Pickersgill also appears to have thrown out that plan.
It was also expected that with the resources, specifically the engineering corps, commanded by the NWA, the executive agency would have shared with NROCC, the functions of toll authority, Thomas said in June.
Anderson told The Gleaner that he had not been named officially as toll regulator, but Thomas had insisted then that the matter was a mere formality, only requiring a letter from the Transport Minister who he said might just have been too busy to get around to it.
Pickersgill's timetable has delayed the implementation of tolling which Prime Minister P.J. Patterson had earlier promised would have happened around Independence, and which TransJamaican Highway had set an August 11 deadline to roll out. A toll regulator has to be in place to sign off on the toll rates, which TransJamaican submitted for approval in May.
Pickersgill, speaking with the Financial Gleaner late last month, said there were no problems with the fee application.
The fee will be applied under a "open toll system" for the Old Harbour Bypass which means that motorists will pay a flat $50, in the case of standard vehicles, to travel the 13 kilometre stretch. Trucks and trailers will pay higher rates.
The concession agreement had originally named five categories, but Thomas said it has now been "reduced to three for simplicity." A fee board has already been erected near the bypass and is awaiting the Minister's gazetting of the rates to publicise the tolls. Thomas again insisted that tolling will begin this month, but has been pushed backed to very end, with advertisements and promotions to get underway at least a week prior, he said.
The Old Harbour Bypass is the first section of the Highway 2000 project to be built and tolled, under the US$390 million first phase plans to link Mandeville to Kingston.
The highway which is meant to link the city of Montego Bay and the expanding resort town of Ocho Rios to the Kingston capital, has been split into three phases.
- Lavern Clarke
