The case has long been made, but was reinforced by last week's events during Tropical Storm Gustav. For the umpteenth time in recent years, the Rio Cobre, swollen and angry from a storm, overflowed its banks into the Bog Walk gorge, ripping up the roadway. And for good measure, landslippage on the overhanging hillside sent boulders tumbling down. That, too, has happened before.

While there have been deaths and other tragedies on this treacherous bit of roadway, we have been relatively lucky in avoiding a monumental disaster, if measured in terms of loss of human life. We have come close, though - several times. Just a year ago, the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) had to rescue more than 50 persons trapped in the gorge during floods.

But as important as it is, the potential for the loss of human life is not the compelling contribution to the case for the closure of the Bog Walk gorge and the creation of an alternative route.

Critical economic regions

Here is a fact that is notoriously known to be so. Jamaica has two critical economic regions: its south and north coasts. In the south, developed around the world's seventh-largest natural harbour, is the capital, Kingston, and major commercial and business centres.

The island's tourism industry, the major earner of foreign exchange outside of money sent home by Jamaicans living abroad, is based mainly on the north shore. Imported goods for this critical industry and for people living in the north are generally landed at the ports in Kingston and trucked to the north coast over the island's central hilly spine.

But as we have pointed out before, this critically important traffic of goods and people comes down to a ridiculously narrow pass. Almost all this movement is via the Bog Walk gorge and across the Rio Cobre over a little stone bridge that is perhaps more than 300 years old, supposedly initially built by Spanish settlers to the island.

It all seems so ludicrous in the context of modern commerce and engineering capabilities.

Setting priorities

We had assumed that the absurdity of the Bog Walk gorge - and the difficulty of traversing Mount Rosser on the trek between the south and north coasts - would be addressed with the north/south spur off of Highway 2000. Indeed, something is being done, but there is a sense that the authorities have not quite got their priorities right.

If the project is assessed narrowly in the context of the highway as a toll road that is to pay for itself, prioritising the section now being built to bypass Mount Rosser makes sense as a starting point. It has the potential for greater traffic.

But, there are wider economic and social issues here, which we are not sure have been adequately considered. We suspect that there is a broader economic loss from the Bog Walk snarls and the periodic closure of the gorge when it becomes too dangerous to traverse. In any event, it would seem sensible to have both legs completed at the same time.

We are sure that the authorities will argue that financing the project will be an issue for the Government and private partners. But there are some things that transcend the norm and demand creative solutions. This, obviously, is one of them.