Modern Diamond to Ogle road designed to include rail system

The “very modern design” of the road running from Diamond on the East Bank to Ogle on the East Coast caters for a rail system in the middle if the government decides on such a system in the future, Finance Minister Winston Jordan said Friday.

“So, you don’t have to dig up back the road, dig up the cable and everything else.

“In the middle is designed to put in the rail whenever we are ready,” Jordan said at a press conference at the headquarters of the Peoples National Congress Friday morning.

“So, you’ll be driving on both sides, but in the middle, when we are ready we could put a rail system from Georgetown maybe going right up to Linden,” he added.

The government has not released the final design of the project.

On May 23 this year, government Parliamentarians approved $67 million to pay consultants for the design.

In addition, the money will cover what Minister David Patterson said was costs associated with draining of a 30-acre swamp area along the new alignment identified for the project.

The funding is a supplementary provision to the 2019 budget for which $2.2 billion was already allocated in the budget.

Funding from the Government of India was committed to the tune of US$50 million for the original project, but the new project is expected to cost more than double that.