St. Maarten Private Eye

By Rueben J Thompson

Love the Lagoon, Environmental Protection in the Caribbean

Traffic congestion has become a major concern for St. Maarten’s residents and its many cruise ship and stay-over visitors. Long traffic jams occur throughout the entire island with the route between the Airport and Philipsburg, which partially follows the Lagoon’s shoreline, often being the most congested.

Alleviation of traffic congestion has been mentioned as a policy priority in numerous policy plans and has been a focus of scrutiny in many government commissioned studies and reports. The Multi Annual Policy Plan 1998-2003 for instance, states that government intends:
•to increase capacity and decrease bottlenecks by constructing new road links and improving existing roads and intersections.
•to manage demand by reducing the number of road vehicles.

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Much of Governments actions and projects aimed at the alleviation of traffic congestion have only focused on the expansion of road networks. Various government policy plans, government commissioned reports and independent studies have, however, identified the alarming number of vehicles (15.525 in 2003 and over 19.000 in 2007) on St. Maarten as a primary cause of the traffic congestion challenges the island faces. In addition to the aforementioned, research and experience in many countries shows that increased road capacity is very quickly filled with what researchers have dubbed “induced vehicle traffic”; people tend to abandon public transportation and carpools when additional road space is made available, through new road construction or linkages, thereby resulting in more cars on the road and subsequently more traffic jams.

St. Maarten’s traffic congestion issues will therefore not be alleviated by the expansion of the road network alone. Building new roads without taking additional measures to curb the increase of vehicles on the island is merely a very temporary measure and consequently an ineffective strategy for resolving the island’s traffic congestion challenges.

The Tourism Master Plan provides recommendations and specific proposals aimed at alleviating traffic congestion in the longterm including proposals on:
•Raising road or registration tax with excessively large cars more highly taxed
•Introducing a regulated public transportation system.
•Regulating the car rental sector to limit the number of rental vehicles and issue of new car rental licenses

If government really intends to resolve St. Maarten’s traffic congestion issues, it would do well to implement the projects and strategies developed and recommended by experts as presented in the abovementioned Tourism Master Plan, the St. Maarten Carrying Capacity Study and other relevant research papers.
Make sure you read the next Lagoon Log for more answers to your questions and for more information on the Simpson Bay Lagoon.

Rueben J. Thompson
Project Manager Love the Lagoon, Environmental Protection in the Caribbean

Additional Lagoon Logs - By Rueben J Thompson - EPIC

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