During every high season come the usual complaints about heavy traffic. It is obviously the time of year with the most vehicles on the road, including many rentals.
The latter are often driven by guests less familiar with local circumstances. Tours by bus, taxi, quad, bicycle, etcetera, combined with schools reopening after the holidays may be added to the mix as reasons for this congestion.
But people are quick to forget. While there were far fewer both residents and visitors back then, the situation wasn’t much better until the then Island Government and in particular – the late – Commissioner of Public Works Roy Marlin started installing roundabouts at several key intersections and junctions, considerably smoothing the flow of traffic.
The completion of Link One is another example. And although former National Alliance (NA) leader and Prime Minister William Marlin called it a “bridge to nowhere” and former Member of Parliament (MP) Theo Heyliger served prison time for corruption in the project, the Simpson Bay Lagoon Causeway also helped reduce gridlock especially on Airport and Welfare Roads.
In fact, the author of this column can testify to having to endure two Simpson Bridge openings stuck in traffic before, because it was not even possible to get to the bridge in-between the two. There are also memories of daily morning lines of cars heading for Philipsburg backed up all the way to Cole Bay Hill and beyond, just to name a few.
So talk of “the good old days” in this regard makes little sense, since they really weren’t that great when it comes to road congestion. Of course, the number of cars has increased significantly, but steps were at least taken to mitigate this negative impact of the tourism economy’s rapid growth.
Mind you, one may expect nothing less, as the Latin inscription on St. Maarten’s flag “Semper pro Grediens” (Always Progressing) indicates. However, to simply say things are much worse than they used to be doesn’t tell the whole story.
It’s all relative.
