President Irfaan Ali has unveiled the completed design for a major overpass across the Heroes Highway, a part of his administration’s Phase II national traffic management plan aimed at better linking the East Bank and East Coast of Demerara. Inspections at the Buzz Bee Dam works have revealed that on the eastern end the overpass will connect directly to the East Coast, while on the western end it will lead to Vreed‑en‑Hoop.
“This is going to be a major game changer, this highway, because it is going to open up thousands of acres of land, farmland, commercial land, industrial land. It’s going to put to use assets that were idled,” Ali said, describing the overpass as unlocking dormant economic potential.
Phase II also includes a new interconnection from Buzz Bee Dam to the Eccles dumpsite road, then to Aubrey Barker Street, Ogle, and eventually to Enmore. The full completed route is expected to be sixteen lanes from Buzz Bee Dam to Ogle, easing congestion and cutting travel time across East Bank–East Coast corridors.
Advanced drainage and excavation works are projected to finish by March next year, weather permitting.
Meanwhile, designs for the highway from Land of Canaan to Soesdyke are to be completed by end‑2025, under consideration of overpass constructions for swampy or sandy terrain akin to methods used in the U.S. Everglades.
Echoes of Burnham: Vision, Constraints and Revival
Observers note that many of the PPP’s current infrastructure ambitions—overpasses, expanded highways, major bridges—mirror the developmental plans of the 1970s under People’s National Congress (PNC) Forbes Burnham-led government The original “Highway Approaches to Georgetown and New Amsterdam Development Plans”, for example, envisioned a major East Bank artery, improved coastal roads, expanded connectivity, and substantial road networks intended to spur agricultural, industrial, and commercial growth.
That earlier plan was hamstrung, however, by a mix of inadequate financial resources, geopolitical Cold War pressures, and internal political sabotage that drained the economy and undermined access to foreign capital and technical assistance.
In reviving many of these long‑held goals, the PPP government is effectively “copying wholesale” from the PNC’s blueprint—upgrading an idea whose time was delayed by external and internal obstacles, that included that party’s consistent sabotage of the economy. Whether the current government will avoid the same pitfalls remains to be seen, particularly around financing, maintenance, and political consistency.
