Nicholas Richards, Gleaner Writer
Several lanes of Kingston-bound traffic appraoch the toll booth in Portmore last Monday. - Norman Grindley/ Deputy Chief Photographer
ALTHOUGH THEY were happy to trot out the numbers in the public relations battle last Monday over the boycott of the Portmore leg of the tolled Highway 2000, the highway's French owner/operator says it will no longer make public statements about figures on usage.
"It's a rule, I don't distribute numbers" said Trevor Jackson, the managing director of TransJamaica Highway, a subsidiary of the French construction and engineering company, Bouygues, that developed Highway 2000 and has the concession to run it.
"It was appropriate for the opening [but] we have stopped talking about numbers."
Sunday Business had contacted Jamaica Infrastructure Operators Limited, the entity responsible for operating the toll road, who referred the newspaper to Jackson.
Highway 2000 is to be a 250 kilometre motorway from Kingston on the south coast through mostly south central Jamaica, before swinging to Montego Bay on the island's north-western coast. Until this week, a little over 21 kilometres of the road, between Kingston and Sandy Bay, Clarendon were completed and things were going relatively well.
SIX LANE BRIDGE CONTROVERSY
But the latest segment, costing over US$130 million ($8.5 billion), including a new six-lane bridge over the Kingston Harbour, linking the capital to Portmore, west of the city, has been wracked by controversy.
Portmore residents, who went to court and lost over having to give up the old causeway and the adequacy of the alternative route to Kingston, insist that the $60 toll for cars to use the bridge is too high and their community groups called a boycott.
The Portmore Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC) has called for a $30 toll, a figure which TransJamaica says would not allow it to meet its financial projects and service its debts.
After the Portmore leg was formally opened last Saturday, Jackson said announced that over 17,000 trips were made across the bridge.
On Monday, at the start of the working week and what should be the height of the boycott, Jakcson said that over 27,000 trips had been made on the Portmore leg of the motorway, just shy of the 28,000 projected by the operators for viability.
But while he declined to provide the data, which can provide the basis for analysis, Jackson suggested large numbers were using Highway 2000 without problems and that gridlock evident earlier in the week on the un-tolled Mandela Highway had dissipated. "I can tell you that there is no congestion on Mandela," he said.
As to how efficient it is for motorists to use Highway 2000 from Portmore, Jackson said, "There are stories of people who suddenly can have breakfast at home and still reach Kingston in 45 minutes. However, you are not gonna get any numbers out of me."
THE BOYCOTT
But Yvonne McCormack, the chairman of PCAC who is leading the boycott said she is puzzled as to why TransJamaican is withholding the numbers.
"They are saying that 17,000 motorists used it (the highway) on Saturday, but where are the numbers?" she asked.
She continued: "I am not buying what they are saying, because without the figures we can't know what is really happening."
McCormack said she was confident that Portmore residents were maintaining their boycott, leaving their homes earlier, thus mitigating the congestion on Mandela Highway.
She said the PCAC was planning a community meeting to assess the success of the boycott. Last week she reported that at least 75 per cent of drivers who normally used the causeway to get to Kingston were using the Mandela Highway.
