Highway 2000: The best example of infrastructural transformation
Before the construction of the Portmore leg of Highway 2000, residents of the dormitory community of Portmore, St Catherine, who worked and went to school in Kingston, had to wake up at the ‘ungodly’ hour of 3 a.m., former Minister of Transport and Works Robert Pickersgill reminded The Gleaner in a recent interview. Back then, the traffic would snake along the then two-lane causeway, forcing many residents to leave home extremely early if they wanted to beat the rush hour.
“They now get up at normal times like people living in Kingston,” Pickersgill boasted. “When you do the calculation, it is cheaper. The car was there and you were wasting gas, time, and the pollution of the atmosphere.”
According to statistics from the National Works Agency, more that 17,000 vehicles travelled eastbound from Portmore to Kingston daily, before the highway was constructed. “We moved from a two-lane bridge to a six-lane highway,” Pickersgill said.
Although an afterthought, the Portmore leg of Highway 2000 epitomised the main objective of the P.J. Patterson administration which devised the idea of a major roadway to connect Jamaica’s main towns back in 1999.
“After seeing the success of the first phase of the highway, Bushy Park, the local representatives in Portmore started to request the highway there, and we saw the necessity for it,” Pickersgill explained. “It came at a cost, but we looked at the comparative cost and no one could challenge those costs.”
Pickersgill, who served as transport minister from 1999 to 2007, said the then government wanted to sprout economic growth and believed the best way to do so was through the development of the island’s infrastructure.
“As I have had cause to borrow this quote before: The road to development begins with the development of roads,” Pickersgill said. “The east-west corridor (of Highway 2000) was extended from Bushy Pak to May Pen …. and, as you have seen, has spawned several developments along the corridor, including housing and commercial establishments.”
The north-south leg of the highway currently connects the island’s urban areas on the south coast to the tourist resorts on the north coast.
“A transport company that shall remain nameless did the comparative cost. What it used to be to take a plane to Montego Bay (from Kingston) ... and [now we] have ports at various destinations around the island because of the highway,” Pickersgill said.
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