Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Last week, a re­port pro­duced by the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Sub­re­gion­al Head­quar­ters for the Caribbean said that the av­er­age trav­el­er in T&T spends ap­prox­i­mate­ly 33 days each year sit­ting in traf­fic. The study said the eco­nom­ic waste is es­ti­mat­ed to be $2.26 bil­lion per year.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ex­am­ines the caus­es of traf­fic, the ve­hi­cles on the road and its im­pact on men­tal health.

Along­side T&T suf­fers from high lev­els of per­son­al ve­hi­cle own­er­ship, in­creas­ing ur­ban­i­sa­tion and lag­ging de­vel­op­ment of pub­lic trans­porta­tion, the coun­try’s poor­ly de­signed and main­tained road­ways were iden­ti­fied as fac­tors caus­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion.

These fac­tors were high­light­ed in ECLAC’s Caribbean Traf­fic Con­ges­tion As­sess­ment pub­lished last week.

Road users con­tin­ue to com­plain about the con­di­tion of roads de­spite the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) spend­ing more than $600,000 a day re­pair­ing and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing roads be­tween Jan­u­ary 2021 and April 2023 and de­spite the for­ma­tion of the Sec­ondary Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny which was giv­en $100 mil­lion to spend on projects.

Poor road con­di­tions are a long-stand­ing is­sue, but with the ECLAC study paint­ing a pic­ture of the im­pact of traf­fic on the pop­u­la­tion and the econ­o­my, an es­ti­mat­ed $2.26 bil­lion per year, there is a re­newed fo­cus on the sub­ject.

“In 2024, we will con­tin­ue the roll­out and ac­cel­er­a­tion of our road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme, with the tar­get be­ing all the roads in Trinidad. Over the next two to three years, we will con­tin­ue to roll out projects across the coun­try, in­clud­ing traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion, road re­con­struc­tion, slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion and bridge re­con­struc­tion,” Min­is­ter Im­bert read in his 2024 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, but protests and com­plaints about poor road con­di­tions across the coun­try con­tin­ue.

But why af­ter the MOWT spent $512 mil­lion on 287 road re­pair and im­prove­ment projects be­tween 2021 and ear­ly 2023 - in­clud­ing 15 traf­fic man­age­ment mea­sures that cost $155.9 mil­lion - are so many roads still in such a state?

Here are the main caus­es of poor road con­di­tions, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al en­gi­neers and state agency sources.

1)Over­loaded ve­hi­cles

An over­loaded ve­hi­cle that is twice the stan­dard weight will cause 22 times more dam­age than a stan­dard-weight ve­hi­cle and based on lo­cal re­search, a road de­signed to last 20 years shows se­ri­ous signs of stress by year sev­en, civ­il en­gi­neer Lacey Williams told Guardian Me­dia

In March 2019, for­mer di­rec­tor of the MOWT High­ways Di­vi­sion Navin Ram­s­ingh claimed that if over­loaded ve­hi­cles were re­moved from the coun­try’s roads, it could save the coun­try ap­prox­i­mate­ly $58 mil­lion in road re­pairs an­nu­al­ly.

De­spite this, law en­force­ment of over­loaded ve­hi­cles re­mains weak, ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try in­sid­ers.

On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, MOWT Ro­han Sinanan as­sured that there will be a crack­down on over­weight ve­hi­cles, but en­force­ment re­mains poor.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2021 and May 11, 2023, de­spite thou­sands of over­loaded ve­hi­cles us­ing the roads every day, on­ly 62 fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued by the Trans­port Di­vi­sion for ‘goods ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing ex­cess weight.’

“Ei­ther we have very com­pli­ant truck dri­vers or en­force­ment is woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. Both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Of­fi­cers of the Trans­port Di­vi­sion, MOWT have the pow­er to en­force the law re: over­weight ve­hi­cles,” Dr Townsend said in 2023.

In 2022, the fine for an over­loaded ve­hi­cle was raised to $8,000.

2) A Lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion Be­tween WASA and the Min­istry of Works

There has been a long-stand­ing ‘blame game’ be­tween the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the MOWT, ac­cord­ing to en­gi­neers and state agency sources.

While the Min­istry of Works of­ten claims WASA leaks cause roads to de­te­ri­o­rate through leak­ing pipes and valves, WASA claims, in re­sponse, that many roads are not built cor­rect­ly, caus­ing them to slip and, in turn, break their pipes.

En­gi­neers told Guardian Me­dia that with­out prop­er over­sight and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween WASA and the MOWT, the blame game cy­cle will per­sist.

Min­is­ter Sinanan has as­sured that a road man­age­ment au­thor­i­ty would be es­tab­lished, but it’s un­clear if that in­deed took place.

JSC pres­i­dent, and civ­il en­gi­neer, Fazir Khan has pre­vi­ous­ly called for a more proac­tive ap­proach to be adopt­ed in deal­ing with the is­sues fac­ing WASA, the MOWT, and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

3) Ab­sence of da­ta

There is no de­tailed or struc­tured da­ta pro­gram al­low­ing the rel­e­vant ac­tors to make in­formed de­ci­sions go­ing for­ward, ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try ex­perts.

4) Cor­po­ra­tion is­sues

In­dus­try ex­perts told Guardian Me­dia that an­oth­er cause for con­cern is the stan­dard of en­gi­neer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Ex­perts be­lieve that while there are qual­i­fied en­gi­neers, there are prob­lems with ad­e­quate train­ing.

But lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors said that the re­al is­sue is that cor­po­ra­tions are not giv­en enough fund­ing to main­tain and re­pair roads.

A coun­cil­lor, who asked Guardian Me­dia to with­hold their iden­ti­ty, claimed that he was giv­en $300,000 for roads out of an al­lo­ca­tion of more than $70 mil­lion. The coun­cil­lor es­ti­mat­ed that $300,000 would pave around 500 to 700 feet of road­way.

“I know the gov­ern­ment brought prop­er­ty tax, and it’s sup­posed to go to the cor­po­ra­tions. I don’t know how that’s go­ing to play out. With that, ob­vi­ous­ly, it will help...It’s re­al­ly dif­fi­cult for any coun­cil­lor in this coun­try,” the coun­cil­lor said.

5) Poor road project su­per­vi­sion

A high-rank­ing state agency source told Guardian Me­dia that there is poor su­per­vi­sion of projects, al­low­ing some con­trac­tors to cheat the process by us­ing in­fe­ri­or ma­te­r­i­al than they are con­trac­tu­al­ly ob­lig­at­ed to. This al­lows them to in­crease their prof­its by spend­ing less on road con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als. How­ev­er, it means the roads are not built prop­er­ly.

6) Cars on the road

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $24.9 bil­lion, or US$3.7 bil­lion, was spent im­port­ing ve­hi­cles in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­tween 2007 and 2022, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

This rep­re­sents an av­er­age of TT$1.6 bil­lion per year.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, $12.7 bil­lion, or US$1.87 bil­lion, was spent on im­port­ing med­i­cine and TT$11.4 bil­lion, or US$1.7 bil­lion, on wheat, rice and veg­eta­bles.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Eco­nom­ic Com­plex­i­ty, in 2021, Trinidad and To­ba­go im­port­ed US$42.8 mil­lion worth of ve­hi­cles from Japan, US$29 mil­lion from Thai­land, US$19.2 mil­lion from South Ko­rea, US$10.9 mil­lion from In­dia and US$8.58 mil­lion from Ger­many.

Since Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion came in­to of­fice in 2015, there has been a slight de­crease in the ve­hi­cle im­port bill.

Be­tween 2016 to 2022, $11 bil­lion was spent im­port­ing ve­hi­cles, while be­tween 2008 and 2015, $12.5 bil­lion was spent.

There has al­so been a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of new and used reg­is­tered ve­hi­cles com­ing on­to the roads in re­cent years.

Be­tween 2018 and 2022, more than 44,450 new ve­hi­cles and 44,457 used ve­hi­cles were reg­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to Cen­tral Bank da­ta. From the pe­ri­od 2018-2020 to the pe­ri­od 2021-2023, there was a de­crease of 46 per cent in the num­ber of reg­is­tered new and used ve­hi­cles com­ing on­to the roads.

The start of the de­crease co­in­cides with the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­duce the per­mis­si­ble age of im­port­ed for­eign used ve­hi­cles, as well as the quo­ta for the im­por­ta­tion of new and used cars from 2021.

Ve­hi­cle to pop­u­la­tion ra­tio re­mains high

How­ev­er, de­spite the state mak­ing some head­way in at­tempt­ing to re­duce the num­ber of cars com­ing on­to the road­ways, more ac­tion is need­ed.

As re­port­ed in a draft pol­i­cy by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to reg­u­late the car in­dus­try more than 12 years ago, the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of used cars through quo­ta sys­tems and lim­its by it­self is not an ef­fec­tive tool in abat­ing the con­tin­u­ing prob­lem of traf­fic con­ges­tion.

The coun­try’s ve­hi­cle-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tio re­mains high and ve­hi­cle oc­cu­pan­cy rates re­main low - a ma­jor cause of traf­fic con­ges­tion in the coun­try.

“Ve­hi­cle con­ges­tion is al­so ap­par­ent in T&T, which had more than 1 mil­lion reg­is­tered ve­hi­cles on the road and an in­crease of more than 25,000 new cars in 2019…This amounts to a ve­hi­cle-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tio of rough­ly 0.76,” the ECLAC re­port said.

Over many years, trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer Dr Trevor Townsend - a for­mer chief traf­fic en­gi­neer - has made many, if not all, of the points made in ECLAC’s re­port. In May 2023, he pre­sent­ed a spe­cial lec­ture for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go called “Is­sues Im­pact­ing Con­ges­tion Re­duc­tion in T&T.”

Among the rel­e­vant find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 90-minute speech, he spoke specif­i­cal­ly about the im­pact of the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ve­hi­cles on the coun­try’s roads on traf­fic con­ges­tion.

He said the coun­try has well-de­vel­oped high­way sys­tems, so the fo­cus on im­prov­ing the coun­try’s traf­fic woes should be on a ma­jor modal shift to­wards high-oc­cu­pan­cy ve­hi­cles and a mass tran­sit sys­tem.

“A UWI study on the East-West cor­ri­dor found that 60 per cent of traf­fic was pri­vate cars and 40 per cent of traf­fic was pri­vate taxis.

Of the taxis, 80 per cent were sedan type and 20 per cent were high-oc­cu­pan­cy ve­hi­cles. We need to make a shift in that if we are go­ing to deal with that dis-equi­lib­ri­um on the ex­ist­ing road net­work be­tween de­mand and sup­ply for ve­hi­cles.

“Car own­er­ship lev­els are high and oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els are low. I re­mem­ber we did a study at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies on ve­hi­cle oc­cu­pan­cy on the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, there were 1.3 per­sons per ve­hi­cle,” Dr Townsend said.

Dr Townsend, a re­tired se­nior lec­tur­er in trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer­ing at UWI’s St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, said the coun­try must pri­ori­tise pub­lic trans­port through cap­i­tal ex­pens­es, trans­fers, sub­si­dies and fis­cal in­cen­tives.

High-oc­cu­pan­cy ve­hi­cles, like max­is or bus­es, he said, would take more cars off the road, thus re­duc­ing con­ges­tion. He said for decades lo­cal en­gi­neers have sug­gest­ed the so­lu­tion re­sides in a mass tran­sit sys­tem. An IDB trans­porta­tion study in 2017, he added, sup­port­ed their po­si­tions, rec­om­mend­ing that a bus rapid sys­tem and pri­or­i­ty bus route sys­tem would be the best so­lu­tion for the east-west cor­ri­dor and an ex­press bus/large maxi taxi sys­tem would be the best op­tion for West­ern and North-South routes.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of the 2017 IDB study, there was an av­er­age of 105,000 pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling the West­ern Cor­ri­dor - from Diego Mar­tin to Port-of-Spain - every day; an av­er­age of 178,000 pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling the East­ern Cor­ri­dor - from Port-of-Spain to San­gre Grande; and an av­er­age of 87,000 pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling the South­ern Cor­ri­dor - from Mt Hope to San Fer­nan­do.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Townsend, the state’s fo­cus has been on the move­ment of ve­hi­cles when it should fo­cus on the mo­bil­i­ty of peo­ple.

“There is no pol­i­cy, strat­e­gy or plan gov­ern­ing the sec­tor. We have not cre­at­ed an in­sti­tu­tion be­cause we have not seen it fit. And it’s not about blam­ing this gov­ern­ment. We have been cry­ing for this since 1996,” the en­gi­neer said.