Traffic and Infrastructure in Mauritius

[Martijn]

Mauritius is a beautiful island with an infrastructure which cannot handle the rising amount of traffic. I recently bought a motor-cycle which becomes more and more a must have considering the traffic jams. There are tons of buses, taxi's, trucks, bikes and private cars on the road which all want to go from A to B. The roads are full and with tons of people purchasing new vehicles, the roads become even fuller. Where does this go?? What is being done??

[Dietmar]

Hoi Martijn,

a big warm welcome to you to the Mauritius Forums!

Indeed since the mid nineties the purchases of motor vehicles has increased and is still increasing and traffic has been rising tremendously since then. There are now around 400 000 cars on the roads. Our main road outside was once a very quiet unused road, after 20 years, its become a main artery of Grand Baie, with traffic lights and traffic accummulation at the hours of 18:00.
From the north till curepipe, along the highway, traffic congests in many parts. In the morning it once took me from Phoenix round about, one of the worst spots till Grand Baie around 3 hours, which in general would take maybe 45mins - 1 hour. Recently a third lane has been released when approaching port-louis, i don't know if that has improved the congestion. Now i see a construction on the round about at Caudan, let's see the impact of this. Else the ring road to bypass Port-Louis is under construction. Am sure that will help a lot. Up in the north i have noticed 2 bypass roads which are one going by triolet and one going by goodlands and i must say those are some very good improvements and using them is very time efficient and there is barely any traffic. Also the addition of a lane on each side on the highway from FORBACH to PAMEPLEMOUSSES has also improved the time required to go to Port-Louis. For me i noticed and improvement of 10mins, plus you can drive at a steady speed without being stuck behind a truck...

They are also adding a lane on each side of the road of the last part of the highway that leads to Grand Baie which i think will be a great improvement on a whole. With the new bypass roads, there are more that have been built in other regions of which i am not aware of will also improve the traffic congestion. The ring road around the bottle neck of port-louis will be a huge improvement i believe.

Points i ponder about is that round about before JIN FEI at Riche Terre, if 30 000 people will live there and about 10 000 jobs will be created, how will be the traffic situation...

Apart from a third lane being built at the highways departing from the phoenix round about, i believe that place really requires a FLY OVER. Vacoas/Phoenix are known to be one of the most densely populated areas in Mauritius with a population of +200 000 persons. The congestion there is daily and at different hours where you wouldn't expect any congestion.

Don't forget that congestion and traffic jams lead to more consumption of fuel, which brings in also some extra money into the state treasury

Also, there are lots of roads that require repairs, like up north after pereybere... And a lot of places require infrastructure improvements such as canalisation and sidewalks. I have seen them at work in many places - there is progress and it will be interesting to observe how things evolve over the years to come. Am sure sooner or later Mauritius will also become a great car exporter towards Africa

[Martijn]

Hello Dietmar, thanks for your prompt reply! You are sharing some interesting thoughts and facts. I have a dumb question concerning the technical matters of this forum - how do you multi-quote a message?? Do you need to select the button and then select text?

'Multi-quote'! How does it work ???

[Dietmar]

yes, just select the text that you want to quote and then press the quote button, else you can just give it a try and see how it looks like with the preview button before finally posting it.

[Martijn]

I did some research and found two interesting official government documents:

1. Appendix 3 - Strategic Transport Projects (Planned/ ongoing)
2. Report on Congestion Pricing In Port Louis

Further publications can be found on: Government of Mauritius

The ring road around the bottle neck of port-louis will be a huge improvement i believe.

This project would relieve a huge amount of traffic on the M2 passing through Port Louis. The South will be more connected with the North of Mauritius. I am wondering when this project will come to completion. Do you or anyone has any idea??