He explained it this evening:

Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City
"One of the projects that was identified in the master plan and I repeated this several times on the news that the City Council has fully embraced the master plan project as being the development project for Belize City and the master plan refers to certain infrastructure works that should be done in strategic areas, particularly in the downtown area. What we've identified is that we're restoring Battlefield park, we're taking out the street between Brodies and the park, we're taking out the street between Belize Bank and the park and we're taking out the street between the Belize Bank and the Mule park because that is one of the areas that is causing greatest congestion. The issue with the street between and Mule Park - what the council decided is that we were going to block that street off for a period of time to test whether or not the traffic in the area could tolerate the taking out of that street. We had already taken out the other two streets and we're doing a test phase and residents will observe that street has not been interrupted as yet - it just has some orange barriers that are blocking the street from the flow of traffic. So what we're doing right now is only a test and I was there earlier this morning and this afternoon, I drove the flow of traffic, I also timed it to see how long it took to get around the area and we're monitoring the situation. If it does not work and people are advising that it will not work then we'll take out that portion of the plan.

But the idea with the resurfacing of that area is to turn that entire area, including those three streets into a pedestrian walk way so that it will be uplift. One of the reasons that it was recommended to us to take out those streets, in addition to creating more pedestrian friendly areas in the downtown is to encourage traffic to go way down Albert street. One of the things that we have seen is the Southern part of Albert street tends to be very economically depressed, the business atmosphere down there is not as lively as the core areas of Albert street by where Belize Bank is; so if we encourage traffic to go all the way around - pedestrians will also have to go all the way around and that will see more economic activity in that area. So it's actually deliberate that we are encouraging traffic to drive a little bit further. We're also encouraging traffic - because when we did the analysis today we noticed that a lot of the back streets that we actually want to be more used were not used. So it took you a while to drive along Albert and Regent st. but you could have driven quite easily on Church st. and on East Canal and we're encouraging those streets to be more actively used so that people could get around the downtown area a little bit better."

If members of the public does not like that this particular street is to be permanently closed, they can voice their concern to the Belize City Council. If after the test, if public opinion is unanimous that it is a bad idea, it will be reopened.

And a bit of good news, City Hall reports that Belcan Bridge will be open at noon tomorrow. That should provide some much-needed relief in trying to travel through the city.