San Pedro Traffic Congestion A Real Problem

Traffic in San Pedro Town can be almost as bad as it is in Belize City, particularly during the peak hours at lunch time and after five in the evening. It is a problem that has been plaguing the town for years, but has been exacerbated by the rapid development on the island. But the San Pedro Town Council has been working closely along with the office of the Area Representative, Andre Perez, to ease the bottleneck caused during those rush hours. Perez explained what they’ve been able to do and how they will move to continue reducing that congestion.

Andre Perez

Andre Perez, Area Representative, Belize Rural South

“This is where we’re working. For example, many things we have to look – long term. One of the things that we’re looking at is the primary school right now. It is right in a place where the traffic is in the morning. For schools, it’s a congestion. The mayor and I were working to find an alley to alleviate the problem, which we’re working on right now. We’re looking as well at the water taxi that is soon going to move down south. That is also going to greatly alleviate the traffic as well. So we’re working on these things. The traffic is going to be less concentrated going down south. That’s going to happen very much this year. Secondly, is that we are working along with the Traffic Committee. For example, people – everybody wants golf cards, so now we are concentrating [on] those that live across – giving consideration. People want to have fancy rides, the Polaris and everything, so we’re saying, as you’re living in town, there’s no way you need a Polaris. I’m using that as an example, the 4×4 mules that are very big and noisy. We understand that up north there’s a lot of development, the roads are still not fully developed, so it’s justifiable. So that’s what we’ve been doing. In terms of golf cart rentals, every time there is a special event, there’s a demand for golf cart rentals, but we have to cap it, and that’s what we’ve been doing, so replacing old golf carts, because they get banged up quickly, and you don’t want to have a town full of junk, including the taxis. We want to work along with them. It’s not about the proliferation of just giving the permits arbitrarily. We’re using it to what the rules are: Do you have a parking space? How many people are in your household? You can’t be having that you have two different vehicles in one family. So we’re looking at it very closely, but although the image is looking that we’re having too much, we’ve been doing a lot to control it.”