Inside the Municipal Corporation | Traffic congestion continues to irk commuters in Mandeville

The lawlessness of motorists and the inconsistencies with traffic signs and lights throughout Mandeville continue to make maintenance of order in the town extremely difficult, and stakeholders are now past their boiling point.

Speaking at the Manchester Municipal Corporation's monthly meeting on Thursday, Mayor Donovan Mitchell revealed that at the end of March into the beginning of April, several changes would be made, particularly as it relates to trucks doing deliveries in the town centre.

"I just want to say to the business community at this time that it is not whether or not we will be having those hours for delivery trucks to come in. It is when because it is going to happen. We will be meeting with the business community between now and the end of March. It cannot continue to happen, especially on Fridays, when the trucks are on the roads, especially on Manchester Road and South Race Course Road," Mitchell said.

The mayor stated that there would always be business people who acted as if they were above the law, but they would, eventually, have to comply.

"The Local Governance Act gives the council (the corporation) the responsibility to monitor and manage certain things in this town, and we are going to do likewise. That is why the people have elected all 15 of us to take care of this, and they are looking to us to do what is right," he said.

STREET SIGNS NEEDED

The police are also bemoaning the lack of the street signs in Mandeville, citing it as one of the causes for traffic congestion in not only Mandeville, but also Christiana, another major town.

"In 2017, the police wrote 27,000 traffic tickets in the town of Mandeville. We are urging the National Works Agency to look into the issue of stop lights in the town, and we are asking the municipal corporation to look into the erection of signs," said Superintendent Wayne Cameron.

In analysing the problem of pedestrian traffic by the courthouse, the mayor revealed that in order to lessen the traffic, at the start of April, some taxis would be assigned new parking stands.