The state of roads on New Providence is, frankly, disgraceful.
Given the lack of maintenance, coupled with a particularly rainy hurricane season, potholes abound on the streets of our main island.
Many roads are also uneven, worn down, difficult to navigate because of their disrepair and made even more dangerous with the bad driving that has become customary throughout New Providence.
Add to that the proliferation of dilapidated buildings, the vast number of unkempt verges and overgrowth on empty lots, there are areas in our economic epicenter that resemble a war-torn hell scape.
The mismanaged public trash pickup that leaves many bins overflowing into the street also doesn’t help.
And the issue stretches from Eastern Road to Windsor Field Road, as well as north to south and many, many of the streets that are not main thoroughfares but are heavily traveled.
Prime Minister Philip Davis said last night that the government will start major road works in 2023 as motorists continue to complain about the deplorable state of roads on New Providence.
“The Ministry of Works has just produced a plan for the reconstruction of these roads,” Davis told The Nassau Guardian.
“We will be reviewing it this week and work will start very soon.”
When asked if the public can expect major road works in the new year, the prime minister replied, “Certainly.”
Surely, most of the Cabinet and MPs would have seen the state of things, given that they live here.
That it will be a year and a half before they act, when taking into account the Ministry of Works normally has a continuous road repair program, is baffling.
Free National Movement Leader Michael Pintard said last night New Providence, The Bahamas’ economic hub, requires “focused attention that is sorely lacking under this administration that forecasted substantial improvements and expansion of various thoroughfares”.
“Instead, we are facing elevated complaints from residents about numerous potholes, stalled slow execution of projects underway and no definitive time for start and completion projects such as the Gladstone road expansion,” he said in a statement.
“Certainly, speed and driving without due care and attention have caused damage to vehicles, serious injuries and even death, but so has potholes, deteriorated streets and failure to expand or reconfigure roads clearly identified as hazardous in their present state.”
Minister of Works and Utilities Alfred Sears declined to comment on the state of the roads on Thursday. He said his ministry will soon hold a press conference to outline its plans for the roads on New Providence.
We are anxious to hear these plans.
And we are anxious to know who will be managing the road works.
Whoever it is will hopefully do a better job than is being done on the Village Road Improvement Project, which has ironically become the poster child for poorly handled roadworks.
For many years, the words “road improvement project” were enough to cause shivers for those who lived through the ordeal that was the New Providence Road Improvement Project.
While the roads have held up well and dramatically reduced traffic from what it previously was, the sheer scale of it and the harm it did to businesses was not easy to forget.
How the Village Road Improvement Project differs from the New Providence Road Improvement Project is that it is a single road.
Yet, trenches have been dug up over and over with promises of an end in sight for months and months.
Reasonable people understand the need for progress and upgraded infrastructure.
However, it is not reasonable to continue to upend the lives of thousands of people and sideline a major traffic artery for months on end claiming to be almost done.
The single fastest and well-organized component of the work on Village Road appears to have been the erection of a new wall at the entrance of Bahamas National Trust.
And we suspect that had something to do with the Jollification celebration.
The last time we saw urgency with regard to road repair was when Prince William and Princess Kate visited on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II.
We do not wish to wait until the next royal visit for our roads to be given the attention they need.