It would take a near-loss in the February 2024 local government elections to prod the Government into taking the people seriously in their demands for better road infrastructure, as announced by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness on Saturday in New York.

Addressing a Diaspora Town Hall at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in The Bronx, the prime minister said the country would be embarking on a 20-year journey to bring its roads into conditions “where we can drive in comfort on all of them”.

In the wake of the municipal polls, Dr Holness had acknowledged that road and water were the two main issues that caused the voters to come close to booting the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) from municipality leadership, and he pledged to make significant long-term investments in improving the road infrastructure.

“…Going forward, the Government is making the commitment, with the budgetary allocations from our positive economic performance, to build new roads, improve those roads, and maintain them. For the first time we are in a position that we can project to be able to do this,” he declared.

Listening to the prime minister one could conclude that he had just received an epiphany on the road to his Damascus experience. Every Jamaican Government has known the people’s will about roads, if only because of the numerous protest demonstrations, some often fiery, over the years.

The state of Jamaica’s road network — roughly 25,000 kilometres — has been of great national embarrassment for as long as one can recall.

And yet, it is one of our most important assets, with a value of more than US$70 billion, according to National Works Agency (NWA) 2014 figures. That figure would be higher when new road construction since then is added.

The Jamaican economy relies heavily on road transport for passenger and freight movement. Although a large percentage of these roads have been improved over time, it is recognised that they were never originally constructed to modern engineering standards, but have evolved, in many cases, from bridle tracks, the NWA itself acknowledges.

“The absence of proper road profiles and drainage facilities have taken their toll over the years and the resulting condition of much of the network, particularly the tertiary roads, can be regarded as ranging from poor to very poor,” the agency admitted on its website.

Given high traffic volumes, it is little wonder that there is so much congestion on our roads, yearly increases in crashes and loss of life, as well as the inevitable increase in the cost of operating motor vehicles.

We in this space are, of course, very supportive of the $40-billion Shared Prosperity Through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) Programme, and we commend Dr Holness for acknowledging that “for many years, we did not make the investments to keep the maintenance of our roads”.

So, as the Administration embarks on a sustained programme of road construction and maintenance, it is critical that the related contracts are not given to connected parties and unqualified “eat-a-food” party supporters.

Such a move would only mean that, before long, we would be back to square one, with roads that deteriorate almost within weeks of construction or repairs.