Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation and Telecommunication (TEATT) Grisha Heyliger-Marten’s request for Port St. Maarten Group to present a comprehensive passenger flow plan (see Monday newspaper) appears to make sense. Having thousands of cruise visitors move around the relatively small island on any given day indeed contributes to road congestion.
With an August 21 deadline, it seems the minister means business. Issues to be addressed include traffic flow redesign measures, passenger flow management strategies, a stakeholder coordination framework, short-term infrastructure adjustments, an operational deployment plan, data-driven forecasting and a planning mechanism.
That’s quite a mouthful, but people should not have too great expectations. Apart from the question who will pay the bill for implementing possible concrete measures, realities on the ground can make significant improvements difficult in practice.
St. Maarten has relatively small streets and there is usually little space left along them for expansion. Moreover, businesses and homes often use much of any side-walk for parking.
Consider the current situation at Maho. Like it or not, watching planes land overhead and taking photos or “selfies” is one of the destination’s biggest attractions.
However, there is only one access road locked between the airport and the beach, with no possibility to widen such. The problem is compounded by wrongly parked cars that leave insufficient room to pass in both directions, vehicles stopping to admire the spectacle and taxis as well as tour buses getting in and out of the Morgan Resort lot to drop off and pick up their clients.
But government’s own actions in the past did not always help either. When a female visitor hanging onto the original airport fence to experience horizontal elevation in the so-called “jet blast” fell on the road divider with her head and died, an extra fence was placed further back.
Although it was certainly a tragedy, she and similar thrill-seekers know what they are doing. After all, several clear and very visible warning signs were placed there.
The response by authorities to prevent further fatalities was somewhat understandable at the time but left no footpath behind the guardrail, forcing pedestrians including visitors to walk on the narrow street while there is no space to do so safely. Some even balance dangerously on the divider or wall between road and beach, with all possible consequences.
Other than strictly enforcing parking rules, solutions will be hard to come by without altering the beach, obviously an unthinkable scenario. Limiting access is equally unattractive as this would disappoint many guests.
Nobody said developing into a popular tourism spot with a one-pillar economy would be easy.
