When the plan first went in­to ef­fect, I re­mem­ber that the pub­lic was asked to give the plan time and not judge it quick­ly or harsh­ly. It is now in­to its fourth week and I have ob­served that al­most every day there are some 'tweak­ing' to force the plan in­to suc­cess.

What is clear is that the idea of this traf­fic plan has not blos­somed in­to the great suc­cess that was fore­seen. Al­though I am to­tal­ly for change to­wards the bet­ter­ment of our na­tion, I have con­clud­ed that the plan is not an im­prove­ment but more a dis­tress to­wards the burgess­es of St James and en­vi­rons.

The ad­van­tages to­wards ve­hic­u­lar move­ment far un­der weigh the eco­nom­i­cal and so­cial im­pact on the re­main­der of the com­mu­ni­ty and al­though change is en­cour­aged and wel­comed it should be a change for the bet­ter and not a change that would have ad­verse ef­fects on its peo­ple.

With the new plan it has be­come a guess­ing game with pub­lic trans­port. The mere fact that taxi routes which have been es­tab­lished for decades have been dis­solved overnight with ab­solute­ly no con­tin­gency plan as to what route would most ben­e­fit them and the com­mut­ing pub­lic has it­self cre­at­ed a night­mare in the trans­port sec­tor.

I have had com­plaints that what used to be a two-minute wait for a taxi at any giv­en time has now in­creased sub­stan­tial­ly. It is al­so be­com­ing ap­par­ent that with the taxi routes be­ing in an up­roar, the fares would nat­u­ral­ly have to be in­creased to com­pen­sate for the chaos of the com­mut­ing route. This im­pacts di­rect­ly to the burgess­es of the area fi­nan­cial­ly. All the "tweak­ing" has not tak­en this fac­tor in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

The new dis­tance for peo­ple who use pub­lic trans­port has cre­at­ed a ma­jor in­con­ve­nience to them. Burgess­es who live in the St James area and have to com­mute to and from work are forced to re­struc­ture their sched­ule to com­pen­sate for the ex­tra dis­tance they have to go. Not on­ly do they now have to "hunt" for trans­porta­tion they are forced to walk great dis­tances for that "hunt". The plan has not tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the weath­er con­di­tions and its ef­fects.

It has al­ready proven dif­fi­cult for com­muters leav­ing St James but if you add bad weath­er con­di­tions and the routes where they must walk to get to trans­port this com­mute had be­come a high­ly in­con­ve­nient task. One of the op­tions that a com­muter has is to take trans­port head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion and make a full cir­cuit. This is a loss of time to the com­muter as well as a full ex­tra ex­pense see­ing that they have to pay twice the amount to get to their des­ti­na­tion.

The el­der­ly and the pedes­tri­ans have al­so been af­fect­ed. The new plan has not even be­gun to con­sid­er the in­con­ve­niences cre­at­ed to­wards these cit­i­zens. If a pen­sion­er has to leave St James to go in­to Port-of-Spain, this new plan is mak­ing an al­ready dif­fi­cult task al­most im­pos­si­ble. Ab­solute­ly no thought have been giv­en to the "gold­en" cit­i­zens of St James who are not for­tu­nate to own a ve­hi­cle or have some­one to chauf­fer them around.

An­oth­er prob­lem that has arisen and seems not to be ad­dressed is that of com­muter's safe­ty. The route to get to trans­port from The West­ern Main Road to Mu­cu­rapo Road is not the most sa­vory, es­pe­cial­ly at night. The risk to per­sons trav­el­ling this way is high. There are many dark spots and lone­ly ar­eas be­tween these two points where preda­tors can eas­i­ly prey on in­no­cent vic­tims look­ing to make their way out of the area.

Where­as be­fore com­muters on­ly need­ed to wait along the West­ern Main Road for their ap­pro­pri­ate trans­porta­tion, they now have to "guess" where they can ob­tain trans­port leav­ing them ven­er­a­ble for all form of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, from street rob­beries to rob­beries or worse form ve­hi­cles un­der the pre­tense of pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

In all I be­lieve the new traf­fic plan for the Port-of-Spain area will ben­e­fit the traf­fic flow but the cost to the burgess­es is too high. Con­sid­er­a­tion to­wards the com­mut­ing class should be looked in­to with greater con­cern. I be­lieve that the peo­ple who are reap­ing the ben­e­fits of this plan are those who just use St James as a thor­ough­fare for their des­ti­na­tion but what is the re­al cost to those who live in the area. I am ap­peal­ing that the Min­istry re­voke this heinous plan and cre­ate a new and bet­ter suit­ed strat­e­gy for the less­en­ing of traf­fic es­pe­cial­ly be­fore the new school term opens and we are faced with even more chaos.

Coun­cil­lor B Ram­su­chit

St James East Dis­trict