Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:25 AM
Oct 23, 2018 Letters
Dear Editor,
I wish to note my concerns about the current East Coast Demerara Road Expansion Project from an engineering perspective. Firstly, I must say the project is well needed to serve the people along the corridor and it will have many economic advantages when completed.
However, from traversing this route along the project site daily, I have noticed quite a number of engineering shortfalls. One of the most common mistakes being made is the lack of compaction of the white sand sub-structure which by proper practice should be compacted in approximately 12-inch layers until the desired thickness is achieved. What I have witnessed is the practice of what I would term bulk compaction. This method cannot adequately satisfy the achievement of a proper road foundation and will lead to an early deterioration of the life of the road sub-structure since the foundation will settle over time, causing significant cracking and failure of the asphalt layer. Compaction in layers needs to be tested at each desired compaction level. This fully ensures that the complete white sand level is adequately compacted. If you do a bulk compaction, the testing apparatus would not be adequate to determine the level of compaction throughout the thickness of the entire white sand substructure as this thickness from my observation may reach up to four feet or more. Can the Ministry of Public Infrastructure ascertain that this is the procedure to ensure quality of works and by ascertain I mean make public on their website copies of their reports during the agreed benchmarks of this project and done by the consultant?
Next, I would like to touch on the topic of the contractor’s mode of working. Firstly, from what I have witnessed, this contractor is poised to scarify the entire corridor without even laying any sort of asphalt on any section of the new road. Commuters have to traverse miles of the incomplete sections of the new widening on the crushed stone layer which is quite rough and slow. This will take a toll on most vehicle suspensions and tyres which are not designed for the harsh surface.There seems to be no proper traffic management plan and the reliance of the embankment road is inadequate and not fully thought out as those who come out to their respective communities on the public road are met with no directional signs on the scarified sections and end up reluctantly driving up one way diversions which are not properly demarked. Additionally those who are forced to use the public road diversion do so at the risk of loose stones being catapulted from vehicles speeding through the zone damaging windshields and a few body work shops have actually said they have seen an increase in the number of persons with broken windshields. In previous road projects the widened sections were mandated to be asphalted before scarifying and rehabilitating the existing section are then used as a diversion. Why is the Ministry of Public Infrastructure not enforcing such an approach? No proper road rehabilitation project in this world takes on such an approach.
Most importantly is the final product of the complete road design map which is not available online or anywhere to the public. There needed to be public consultations on the project so that the communities can play an active part in the final design layout during conceptualization. This was never done to my knowledge and as such without stakeholders consultation you will end up with a very poor final design that will not adequately suit the needs of the beneficial communities. Thus far from Plaisance to Happy Acres, there are no access points along the routes as the median currently being constructed is continuous. So rather than solve the problems the project is intended to remedy this would now end up creating a series of bottlenecks along the route especially during peak hours. This final product will become a catastrophe if the engineers at MPI and the E&A consultant do not address these issues urgently.
It seems as though the MPI and E&A consultants are toothless poodles on the project since China Railway has been allowed to bulldoze the entire existing carriageway without any regard for the communities along the route. China Railway’s modus operandi is that of the construction of a new road along the route without adjacent communities. They operate blind to that fact that not only the communities adjacent to the construction are affected but the public road is a vital link from the eastern corridor which supports the rice sector and connects to Suriname.
Yours Truly
Senior Engineer
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