Kali­fa Clyne

While Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing has voiced his sup­port for new traf­fic-con­trol mea­sures for the city, Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud de­scribes the move as a "crit­i­cal mo­ment" for Port-of-Spain. A re­lease from the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture yes­ter­day ad­vised that on April 2, new mea­sures would be in­tro­duced to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic con­ges­tion in Port-of-Spain.

The biggest change is that Ari­api­ta Av­enue will be one-way, go­ing west, and Tra­garete Road will on­ly al­low east­bound traf­fic. The new mea­sures are be­ing in­tro­duced on a tri­al ba­sis for three months in the first in­stance. The re­lease said the move is in­tend­ed to mit­i­gate against park­ing in­frac­tions that con­tribute to traf­fic in the city.

It said park­ing would be pro­vid­ed for dri­vers, as all ex­ist­ing park­ing re­stric­tions would be strict­ly en­forced. The fine for dri­vers who break the new rules will be $750 for the first of­fence and $1,000 for each sub­se­quent of­fence. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Aboud said: "The re­la­tion­ship be­tween park­ing, ve­hic­u­lar ac­cess and the sur­vival of down­town Port-of-Spain is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked."

He said the city would not sur­vive if it ap­peared un­friend­ly to po­ten­tial clients or if "hos­tile" re­stric­tions were im­posed on the peo­ple whose pa­tron­age was cru­cial to the fu­ture vi­a­bil­i­ty of the cap­i­tal. Aboud said Do­ma was try­ing to work very close­ly with Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and his team on the pro­posed re­stric­tions.

He said cus­tomers would as­sume the Gov­ern­ment was say­ing that they were not wel­come, if park­ing re­stric­tions were im­posed with­out op­tions be­ing avail­able. He added that con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to al­low­ing on-street park­ing if there are no al­ter­na­tives. "Port-of-Spain's on­ly draw­ing card is that goods are cheap­er than out­side the city," Aboud said.

"But if one has to add a $500 wreck­ing fee to down­town shop­ping bills, then we be­come to­tal­ly un­at­trac­tive." Aboud said the city was in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion, as many busi­ness­es had al­ready left, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­pos­als would be a crit­i­cal mo­ment in de­ter­min­ing the fu­ture of the city.

Al­so in an tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lee Sing said his cor­po­ra­tion had worked very close­ly with the Works Min­istry on the traf­fic mea­sures and he sup­port­ed them. Lee Sing ex­plained that the mea­sures were ba­si­cal­ly sup­port­ing the cur­rent park­ing rules. "We al­ready have rules when it comes to park­ing, but they are ig­nored and they are not en­forced," he said.

"What these mea­sures en­sure is that if the law says you can't park, then you can't park." Lee Sing ad­mit­ted park­ing arrange­ments in the city had not been fi­nalised, but added: "We can­not be 'busi­ness as usu­al' as it re­lates to traf­fic man­age­ment in the city." "It is es­sen­tial that we try and fail rather than fail to try," he said.

The new mea­sures are in ad­di­tion to the Traf­fic Con­trol (Ex­per­i­men­tal Scheme) for Port-of-Spain reg­u­la­tions, which should have gone in­to ef­fect from March 11, and are ex­pect­ed to end on June 11. The doc­u­ment, signed by Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, out­lines changes in routes such as Ari­api­ta Av­enue be­ing made one-way from Belle-Smythe Street in the west, and Tra­garete Road be­ing made one-way from Dami­an Street to Colville Street.

Both Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Tra­garete Road are ar­eas known for ter­ri­ble traf­fic dur­ing peak hours and are both home to busi­ness­es, with Ari­api­ta Av­enue be­ing wide­ly known as a bustling en­ter­tain­ment hub and cen­tre of night-time ac­tiv­i­ty. Ma­haraj said al­though he signed the doc­u­ment, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the changes lay with Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Warn­er could not be reached for com­ment.