The Editor, Sir:

Once again, the taxpayers of Jamaica are being asked to pay for errors of judgement by our sitting government. One year after the toll road was opened, the government made a great deal of fanfare in announcing that usage of the highway and earnings were well ABOVE expectations. This, however, did not prevent them from approving an increase in toll rates a few months later. Now, a couple years and another toll increase later, we are being informed that we will have to, through our taxes, pay for a billion-dollar shortfall in revenue. What happened?

The fact is, the whole concept of the toll road was ill-conceived from the get go. How many of us remember that the toll road was meant to be an expressway for the P.J. Patterson-conceptualised 10,000-home Clarendon New Town development that has disappeared off the government radar?

Insufficient exits

The paucity of exits from the toll road shows that many satellite communities along the corridor, which have no access to the highway (resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in potential revenue), were never considered in the planning or lack thereof.

The placement of the toll plazas is also a joke. How can motorists accessing the highway from Spanish Town heading to Sandy Bay be required to pay the same toll as those traversing its entire length, even though that journey is 33 per cent shorter? Even the access point of the highway along Mandela Highway makes little sense, as those caught up in bumper to bumper traffic will tell you.

The entrance/exit to the highway should have been placed closer to Six Miles. A toll plaza should have been placed at this point, with another on the highway itself at Spanish Town and another at Old Harbour. This would allow for people in communities like White Water Meadows, The Vineyards, Caribbean Estate, Magil Palms and others under development like New Harbour and Portmore Country Club, to be able to access the highway once the required entry/exit ramps are put in place.

I am, etc.,

MILTON WILLIAMS

miltoncwilliams@yahoo.com

Kingston 10

Via Go-Jamaica