Raphael John-Lall

The open­ing of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to mem­bers of the pub­lic has been ex­tend­ed by an­oth­er six months, be­gin­ning to­mor­row. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said this at Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. A sub­se­quent news re­lease from the Min­istry of Works pro­vid­ed fur­ther de­tails. A three-month tri­al start­ed last Ju­ly 1 and end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30. The tri­al was ex­tend­ed fur­ther for three more months and that ex­pired yes­ter­day.

This six-month ex­ten­sion would al­low reg­is­tered mo­tor ve­hi­cles, car­ry­ing a min­i­mum of three pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing the dri­ver, to have ac­cess to the route from 4 am to 6 am and 8.30 am to 3 pm, Mon­day to Fri­day.

The re­lease said Warn­er was pleased with the first six months of the tri­al as the orig­i­nal plan was to pro­vide strate­gies to ease traf­fic con­ges­tion. "From all the re­ports which I have re­ceived, the first six-month tri­al was a re­sound­ing suc­cess. There is less traf­fic on morn­ings com­ing in­to Port-of-Spain. There­fore, we must ex­tend this tri­al, giv­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic choic­es," the re­lease added.