Melis­sa Doughty

Port-of-Spain's deputy may­or Keron Valen­tine has called for the rein­tro­duc­tion of the park and ride sys­tem used dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic con­ges­tion down­town. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Valen­tine said on Thurs­day that he thinks the cen­tral gov­ern­ment should think of rein­tro­duc­ing the park and ride tri­al for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, giv­en that the num­ber of ve­hi­cles on the city's road­ways will in­crease.

He said he felt it was un­fair for dri­vers to be wrecked dai­ly in the down­town busi­ness area, since there are not enough park­ing spaces for them to utilise. "I don't think the kind of wreck­ing oc­cur­ring in the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict on a dai­ly ba­sis is nec­es­sary, be­cause there isn't enough parkin" he said.

Al­though, he said, there has been on­go­ing di­a­logue be­tween the cor­po­ra­tion and cen­tral gov­ern­ment on the mat­ter, and there are plans to es­tab­lish park­ing zones in the city, this idea has not ma­te­ri­alised. He said he be­lieved the Gov­ern­ment should look at go­ing back to park and ride at least for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Valen­tine said the cor­po­ra­tion's wreck­ing con­tin­ues from 6 pm to 2 am on Thurs­day to Sat­ur­day in Wood­brook, New­town, St James and up­town Port-of-Spain. Cars would be wrecked, he said, if they are il­le­gal­ly parked or block­ing some­one's dri­ve­way, among oth­er in­frac­tions.

Un­der the park and ride sys­tem, dri­vers could park in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and take free shut­tle bus­es down­town. The shut­tles ran to and from the Sa­van­nah every half-hour.