Ian Nar­ine

The is­sues sur­round­ing the high­way to Point Fortin crys­tallis­es our in­ad­e­quate ap­proach to gov­er­nance and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

To be clear, I am not deal­ing with the gov­er­nance process as­so­ci­at­ed with the con­struc­tion of the high­way, but rather the eco­nom­ic is­sues re­lat­ed to build­ing the high­way on the pro­posed route.

There is a view that "en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues are na­tion­al is­sues and go way be­yond the con­cerns of a spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty." I agree, but is­sues of de­vel­op­ment and growth are al­so na­tion­al is­sues. To look at the cur­rent im­passe in terms of a par­tial high­way reroute is sim­plis­tic.

The bot­tom line should be as fol­lows. If an al­ter­na­tive is be­ing sought to the Debe to Mon De­sir route, the al­ter­na­tive pro­pos­al should al­so be a high­way route that links the ma­jor pop­u­la­tion cen­tres in the area as op­posed to by­pass­ing them. If such al­ter­na­tives do not ex­ist, then the best that can be done is to man­age the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact along the pro­posed route. All dis­cus­sions should com­mence from that point on.

Every­one, es­pe­cial­ly those that live on the East/West Cor­ri­dor, un­der­stand that build­ing an in­ter­change at the Churchill-Roo­sevelt/Uri­ah In­ter­sec­tion in iso­la­tion of oth­er im­prove­ments, up­stream and down­stream of the in­ter­sec­tion, served on­ly to trans­fer traf­fic con­ges­tion to oth­er less ef­fi­cient in­ter­sec­tions at a faster rate. Why is it so dif­fi­cult to ap­ply the same prin­ci­ple to south Trinidad?

The last new high­way in T&T was the Mu­cu­rapo Fore­shore built some 30 years ago. There were en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues then as well. Look at the de­vel­op­ment that has tak­en place, malls, sta­dia and en­ter­tain­ment, not to men­tion the most up­scale neigh­bour­hood in the coun­try, since the high­way was con­struct­ed. Imag­ine get­ting to and from west Trinidad with­out that high­way. Why should the peo­ple of Debe, Pe­nal, Siparia and Fyz­abad not have the same op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ford­ed to them?

The Point Fortin High­way was dis­cussed ex­ten­sive­ly in the 2003 Bud­get de­bate. In his con­tri­bu­tion to the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill (bud­get) on Oc­to­ber 13, 2003, the then Min­is­ter for Trans­port, Franklyn Khan was com­ment­ing on the need to man­age the traf­fic in­to Port-of-Spain and redi­rec­tion of traf­fic to­wards east Trinidad in or­der to de­vel­op that area.

"We know that a sim­plis­tic so­lu­tion of just build­ing roads will not solve our prob­lem. The coun­try needs a mass tran­sit sys­tem in­to the city; it al­so needs to pull some em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties east­ward so the whole sys­tem is be­ing planned in uni­son."

Recog­nise the con­cept of cre­at­ing a holis­tic trans­port in­fra­struc­ture. There is a pro­posed high­way sys­tem for the peo­ple of the south west penin­su­lar, in­clu­sive of Debe, Pe­nal, Siparia and Fyz­abad.

To date, no al­ter­na­tive that meets this cri­te­ri­on has been ad­vanced.

Peo­ple first

Con­sid­er a hu­man el­e­ment where two-lane high­ways in T&T have been con­vert­ed in­to three and four lanes. The space con­straints as­so­ci­at­ed with this ex­pan­sion has meant that high­way roads have be­come nar­row­er with a high­er vol­ume of ve­hi­cles.

Has a study been done to de­ter­mine how this has con­tributed to the num­ber of road ac­ci­dents and road fa­tal­i­ties?

A high­way must take in­to ac­count the de­vel­op­men­tal needs of the area 20 to 50 years from now. How does the sug­ges­tion to use ac­cess roads to link pop­u­la­tion cen­tres take this is­sue in­to ac­count? Is it bet­ter to con­struct a high­way to link pop­u­la­tion cen­tres now or use a net­work of ac­cess roads and then seek to widen those roads in a few years time to deal with ca­pac­i­ty con­straints?

Have we learned any­thing from the ex­pe­ri­ence of get­ting in­to city cen­tres?

Here is Prof R De­osaran on April 6, 2010, in the Sen­ate. "(W)e are do­ing this base­line study and se­lect­ed eight city cen­tres: San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do, Princes Town, Ari­ma, Diego Mar­tin, Port-of-Spain, Care­nage and the East/West Cor­ri­dor from Ari­ma, and on a dai­ly ba­sis, about 120,000 per­sons use the road­way to come to the city cen­tre. Do you know how many man-hours they lose per day? On the av­er­age, two ex­tra hours per day for the traf­fic con­ges­tion. That means that you have wast­ed 240,000 man-hours per day just be­cause of the traf­fic con­ges­tion. (At) $25 per hour, on the av­er­age; it costs $1.2 bil­lion per year, which is a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate."

Open­ing up new eco­nom­ic spaces al­le­vi­ates this "waste" and this has to be done holis­ti­cal­ly. In the same con­tri­bu­tion, Prof De­osaran point­ed out, "eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty in the Unit­ed States was not so much due to its fi­nance cen­tres or ser­vice in­dus­tries. It start­ed with a sig­nif­i­cant mon­u­men­tal ex­pan­sion in its trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Goods and ser­vices be­gan to move quick­ly to cre­ate more em­ploy­ment, and the coun­try's eco­nom­ic progress changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly."

Na­tion­al tragedy

Since the 2003/4 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion nine years ago, around $365 bil­lion of rev­enues has been avail­able to the State of T&T, and yet the fun­da­men­tal dri­ver of on­shore eco­nom­ic growth, our high­way net­work, has been left want­i­ng, de­spite re­peat­ed promis­es.

To re­duce our de­pen­dence on oil and gas, T&T needs to in­crease its lev­el of lo­cal ag­gre­gate de­mand and a prop­er trans­port in­fra­struc­ture is cen­tral to this ob­jec­tive.

Look again at the rev­enue sta­t­ic above and read the next line twice. Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank in 2010, 87 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of T&T are classed as liv­ing in rur­al ar­eas. Rur­al means that the area lacks in­fra­struc­ture. of which trans­porta­tion is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent.

With the ex­cep­tion of gov­ern­ment hand­outs, it means the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion are yet to ben­e­fit and be em­pow­ered eco­nom­i­cal­ly from our oil and gas wind­fall. That is a re­al tragedy.

Pol­i­tics and spin

The bud­get de­bate of Oc­to­ber 2003 demon­strates how deeply politi­cised this is­sue has al­ways been. From then, Min­is­ter Franklin Khan: ".. we ex­pect by the end of No­vem­ber, for the lat­est, to award ma­jor de­sign con­sul­tan­cy con­tracts ... for the de­sign of the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way from Gol­con­da to Point Fortin. The high­way to Point Fortin has been giv­en num­ber one pri­or­i­ty"

He fur­ther em­pha­sised: "No­body talks about the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions of La Brea, every­body is con­cerned about what is hap­pen­ing in Ca­roni. I am not say­ing it is wrong, but the man who has been suf­fer­ing for many years with pover­ty in his con­stituen­cy is fi­nal­ly go­ing to see the light as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment con­tin­ues to de­vel­op."

Nine years lat­er, con­sid­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty cost of in­ac­tion. Once again, quot­ing for­mer Min­is­ter Khan in 2003: "the last com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al trans­porta­tion study in T&T was done in 1967, and much has hap­pened in this coun­try in terms of traf­fic and road con­struc­tion from then to now."

On April 6, 2010, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Corinne Bap­tiste-Mc Knight asked in the Sen­ate: "What is the sta­tus of the Com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Study com­mis­sioned in 2004?" The re­sponse: The an­swer is not now ready.

We know what hap­pened over the next few weeks.

To the is­sue of in­de­pen­dent ex­perts, again con­sid­er these ex­cerpts from the bud­get de­bate of Oc­to­ber 13, 2003, by the then Min­is­ter Khan. "Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), this is where all the en­gi­neer­ing ex­per­tise lies in T&T, ... the JCC is say­ing what we need is great sep­a­ra­tion east/west and west/east, which means there will be a ramp mov­ing east/west and west/east and the west to south traf­fic will pass un­der to go to south."

The above state­ment was in re­la­tion to the Uri­ah But­ler in­ter­change. The last time I drove on that in­ter­change west to south, I went on a ramp rather than pass un­der a ramp. When go­ing West/East, I went un­der a ramp. What hap­pened to the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of our ex­perts? I raise this point not to be face­tious, but to pro­vide some bal­ance to the view than an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment will or can be the so­lu­tion to the reroute im­passe.

Da­ta is as­sessed and opin­ions formed. Any as­sess­ment will still be an opin­ion and it can al­so give the wrong con­clu­sion if the terms of ref­er­ence, the facts and the as­sump­tions are in­ad­e­quate.

Fur­ther, the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion still rests with the ex­ec­u­tive, as it must.

We are decades in­to a sit­u­a­tion of ne­glect­ed road in­fra­struc­ture. We have not built a new high­way in 30 years, so there is no prop­er, trans­par­ent process for deal­ing with projects such as these.

Recog­nise this re­al­i­ty and rather than stymie the process, let us ad­dress the gov­er­nance is­sues, in­clud­ing the pas­sage of up­dat­ed pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and move on. That re­quires ma­ture di­a­logue from all sides. With­out that, we con­tin­ue with this farce.

Ian Nar­ine is a bro­ker reg­is­tered with the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion and can be con­tact­ed at ian.nar­ine@gmail.com