Traffic makeover in downtown Belize City continues
Today, the Belize City Council continued with its plans for a traffic makeover at one of the busiest intersections in the downtown area. Today, the council’s traffic coordinator, Glen Rivero, from the traffic department told us that the idea is designed improve the overall traffic flow in the heart of the old capital.
Glen Rivero, Traffic Coordinator for Belize City Traffic Dept.
?We are doing a feasibility study on the flow of traffic and the congestion within the city. North Front Street is one of the first areas where we are implementing a temporary one way flow of traffic. This is to coincide with the zoning area in the tourism village. Because at present it has already been gazetted and implemented as a law that the tourism village area will become a tourist zone. And this will go all the way down to the swing bridge, eventually. So to eliminate the traffic flow, a body of people, which consist of people from the taxi drivers association, people from all walks of life, the city engineer, the town planner, the councillor, Dean Samuels who is in charge of traffic. We all sit and study, it?s a body of people that form the traffic advisory committee and we did a lengthy study on it and with that we come up with implementing North Front Street as a temporary base to see what happened and how it will flow. And we are doing this until the twenty-fourth of May, after the twenty-fourth of May we will then go back and evaluate it.?
?What we are doing at this period is to inform people as we go along. Violation tickets will not be issued at this point. It?s a trial we are on, so we will try every possible way to coincide with the public in getting this whole operation going. So we will ask people kindly not to park. If you are parked there we will try to find the person that is parked and ask them to move their vehicle and to explain to them exactly what we are doing at this time.?
?We are asking the public to just bare with us for a period. Hyde?s Lane is now open for traffic flow from six in the morning to six in the evening, during the peak hours, during the school hours. The driving public, we are asking be very, very careful especially the school hours when the schools are out. There will be children using Hyde?s Lane, the residents of that area; we are also asking if they can refrain from parking vehicle on Hyde?s Lane during that period just to help the flow of traffic.?
According to Rivero, the City Council will be posting traffic wardens on Hydes Lane to ensure the safety of students.
