"Which part ah Cascade?" the taxi drivers ask me, any time after dark when I'm trying to get home.
"Not too far," I lie, bribing them with $30. By the time we're deep in Cascade it will be too late to turn back.
$30 is not a bad price from Independence Square. In London it would cost $120.
When I mentioned on Facebook that I take a taxi to work, a friend was incredulous–until I told him the price is 40p in English money and five people squeeze into a sweatbox car, often without A/C.
I have loved my daily taxi experiences in Port-of-Spain. They've introduced me to a lot of the culture I might not have experienced otherwise. The dialect, music, humour, courteousness, rudeness, heat, dust, fumes...
Still, it's a blessing my friend has lent me his car while he's away.
"You need a car in Trinidad," I was told, repeatedly.
And it is true. Everything is set up that way, the American way. But this is not America, it's a small island and ought to be serviced by an efficient public transport system.
Rowley wants rapid rail. As an Englishman, I must agree. We need not fear industrialised transport in Trinidad.
We already have cars on highways terrorising the countryside, emitting petroleum belches. Modern trains glide, almost soundlessly.
A colleague recently told me we should build a tunnel or bridge connecting Trinidad to Tobago. I laughed, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
England is connected to mainland Europe by tunnel and we feel part of a community.
I don't think a subway system in PoS would work. Not with the crime and homelessness. It's only in recent years the London Underground network began to work efficiently.
The improvements to London's buses and tubes are remarkable, from the decrepit, stinking deathtraps of the 80s to the sleek, clean lifeblood of the city.
They operate 24 hours and arrive every few minutes. You swipe a plastic card against a cardreader to pay for your journey instantly and effortlessly.
Recorded announcements tell you the next stop (intended for blind people but handy for all), buses lower their entrances to allow wheelchair passengers on.
Most tube stations have step-free access (ramps or elevators) for the disabled. I can't imagine the nightmare of trying to travel around PoS if I was in a wheelchair, had young children, was elderly or had mobility problems.
London's transport improvements came at the expense of drivers. To drive into Central London between 7am and 6pm Monday to Friday costs �10, in a toll system like crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. You pay online. Failure to pay by midnight means an automatic fine of �65.
Drivers complained bitterly at first but soon accepted it. Now nobody drives to work in London because modern cities cannot be clogged and polluted with car traffic.
London also has a low emission zone, charging heavy diesel trucks to enter the 60-mile radius around London. Air quality is improved, the yellowy-brown pall lifted.
Trinidad's roads are not user-friendly. Everything requires a car yet the setup is flawed. Despite wreckers operating a racket, cars still park on city-centre roads, narrowing them to a single lane at times, strangling the space.
On the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway you have traffic lights and intersections. Traffic lights on a highway!
Government money would be better spent on that instead of extending a highway through the Oropouche lagoon, displacing hundreds of families.
Money would be better spent decreasing vehicle volume altogether instead of encouraging it to continue.
If rapid rail is to succeed, people must be forced to stop driving: household limits on cars, congestion zones, park and ride, parking fees, car pool lanes.
Tramlines could connect the Savannah to Downtown, Woodbrook, St James, Laventille.
Water taxis (this is an island after all) could carry thousands more between North, Central and South.
Buses could run on time, not whenever they feel like it, like the PTSC services at City Gate with mad scrambles to clamber onboard.
Ask any driver sitting in a daily tailback, foot riding the brake, listening to Rachel Price screeching on the radio, whether they'd rather be sitting in an airconditioned rail carriage snoozing or watching the countryside slide by.