The rev­e­la­tion of the huge amounts of mon­ey that the city of Port-of-Spain makes from wreck­ing il­le­gal­ly parked cars un­der­lines the pop­u­lar view that the aim of the scheme is not so much law en­force­ment as prof­it. Every­one has heard sto­ries of cars be­ing wrecked at nights and at week­ends-when there was no flow of traf­fic, so they could not have been im­ped­ing it. The truth of these anec­dotes is con­firmed by Wood­brook Coun­cil­lor Cleve­land Gar­cia's re­port that a sin­gle week­end can rake in $200,000.

More­over, that sum rep­re­sents on­ly the city's share of the in­come from wrecked cars: the com­pa­nies that car­ry out the wreck­ing make $300 for every $200 the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceives. This over-zeal­ous wreck­ing is not earn­ing any sup­port for the city cor­po­ra­tion, even if it is earn­ing mon­ey. The ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy on park­ing might be more palat­able if it were ap­plied equal­ly rig­or­ous­ly to oth­er is­sues such as garbage col­lec­tion, or va­grancy, or crime.

Many peo­ple feel the ea­gle-eyed, quick-as-a-flash ap­proach to wreck­ing is un­fair, and they are right. In some cas­es the of­fend­ers do not even know they are il­le­gal­ly parked, be­cause the sign­posts are miss­ing or un­read­able, or lines fad­ed. Or they may feel, not un­rea­son­ably, that there is noth­ing wrong with park­ing on a side street at night, where they are not block­ing res­i­dents' gate­ways or caus­ing con­ges­tion.

In some cas­es, how­ev­er, oth­er­wise law-abid­ing dri­vers de­cide to take a chance-be­cause there is no al­ter­na­tive. Like oth­er cities, Port-of-Spain was de­vel­oped in an age when there were no cars. Un­like oth­er cities, how­ev­er, Port-of-Spain has not changed along with the times, and lit­tle or no al­lowance has been made for the grow­ing num­ber of cars that the cap­i­tal has to ac­com­mo­date.

Peo­ple in this coun­try are wed­ded to cars; any­one who can af­ford a car buys one. Even if it is con­ve­nient and read­i­ly avail­able, tak­ing pub­lic trans­port is seen as undig­ni­fied. It may be pos­si­ble to change that at­ti­tude over time. But un­til then, if cars are not wel­come in the city, work­able, at­trac­tive al­ter­na­tives should be of­fered. In­stead, how­ev­er, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion con­tin­ues to give ap­provals for res­i­den­tial build­ings to be con­vert­ed in­to busi­ness places in Wood­brook, even though the new own­ers make no pro­vi­sion for park­ing for their cus­tomers.

Mas­sive of­fice build­ings have been put up down­town in the gov­ern­ment cam­pus. Yet on­ly one car park was con­struct­ed to pro­vide for them all-and al­ready that is al­most full on a dai­ly ba­sis, even though most of the sur­round­ing build­ings are yet to be com­plet­ed and oc­cu­pied.

The city is not mak­ing any at­tempt to pro­vide off-street park­ing or shut­tles to take peo­ple to des­ti­na­tions with­in the city if they park out­side its lim­its. May­or Louis Lee Sing has spo­ken about al­low­ing peo­ple to park in the Sa­van­nah, but des­e­crat­ing the city's most im­por­tant green space would cause more prob­lems and do more dam­age to the city than it could pos­si­bly solve.

The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion and the min­istries of Trans­port and Plan­ning have of­fered no so­lu­tions, and in fact, nev­er have a word to say on an is­sue that falls un­der their purview and that fig­ures in the lives of thou­sands of cit­i­zens on a dai­ly ba­sis. The cor­po­ra­tion, then, is on its own.

The city should take some of the huge rev­enue it makes from wreck­ing and buy or adapt emp­ty lots or de­mol­ish di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings and con­struct its own mul­ti-storey car parks. They would pay for them­selves over time from the fees charged, pro­vide jobs, and of­fer a so­lu­tion that would sat­is­fy al­most every­one-ex­cept the own­ers of the wreck­ers, who are cur­rent­ly mak­ing mon­ey hand over fist.