Ministry of Works to install crash barriers on highway

Sunday’s fatal accident also called into question, the state of the nation’s highways. The vehicle run-off into the Belize River occurred near a section of the highway that is being upgraded. Road conditions have become a concern and a priority of drivers who travel north and many people believe that if there were crash barriers along the curves between the Haulover Bridge and the airport, Kendra Flowers would still be alive today. C.E.O. in the Ministry of Works, Cadet Henderson, says that the ministry intends to install the barriers in the area and also to acquire private land to extend the width of sections of the highway.

Cadet Henderson, C.E.O., Ministry of Works
“Mile five to mile twelve, presently we have some I.D.B. funded intervention where contractor, M.N.R. Construction is restoring areas of the road that had base failure as well as the paving and also we will be extending the river bank protection. Particularly, we will be doing some sheet piling and we had an area where water is at least twelve feet deep immediately beside the road where we installed sheet piling but we need to cap it. And in addition to this contract we will be putting crash barriers along that entire area, including an area where there is an airboat service near mile nine ten on the Western Highway.”

Jose Sanchez
“It’s wider between the Belize City and Haulover and when you jump the Haulover, the road is a lot narrower. People are saying there should be a standard width of the road itself and that portion is not.”

Cadet Henderson
“We’re putting together a plan for that. You may recall hearing we had some C.D.B. approved commitment for investment in the northern highway and the prime minister indicated publicly that the upgrading that we did from mile three to five was so substantial using G.O.B. funds that instead the C.D.B. funds would be targeting mile five to the airport. For that area the road reserve width is indeed small, but my understanding is that historically government never really acquired the land for the road reserve, so these land owners, the Ushers and the Courtenays and so on, they own all the way to the river. Even the strip between the road and the river is owned by these landowners. But we have had informal communications with them over the years appealing to them not to do any construction near to the road reserves, so that we can do the widening in the future. At this stage now we are making efforts to formalize this acquisition of the corridor, so we have been doing some tentative studies on paper and now we are ready to approach the landowners and look at the options.”