Geisha Kow­lessar

T&T has gone "every which way" when it comes to pub­lic trans­porta­tion and a de­ci­sion must be tak­en on the prop­er di­rec­tion the Gov­ern­ment will be head­ing to im­prove this key ser­vice.So said Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz yes­ter­day dur­ing a one-day work­shop on mass trans­porta­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.Mak­ing pre­sen­ta­tions were Dr Trevor Townsend, trans­port sys­tems en­gi­neer and for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC); Dr Rae Fur­longe, traf­fic and trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer and Bob Ling­wood, for­mer CEO of tran­sit, Van­cou­ver, Cana­da, and for­mer con­sul­tant, PTSC trans­for­ma­tion.

Al­so present was An­nie We­in­stock, the US coun­try di­rec­tor for the In­sti­tute for Trans­porta­tion and De­vel­op­ment (IT­DP) and Dr Wal­ter Hook, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of IT­DP.Cadiz said he had count­ed eight dif­fer­ent ways, in­clud­ing bus, maxi and wa­ter taxis, in which peo­ple could move around the coun­try with­out us­ing their pri­vate cars and bi­cy­cles."We need to be able to fig­ure out what are we do­ing with these eight dif­fer­ent modes of trans­port. It is all about the con­nec­tiv­i­ty. It is all about how you ride this pub­lic trans­port sys­tem," Cadiz said.He said in To­ba­go, for in­stance, there was a lim­it­ed maxi taxi ser­vice un­like Trinidad.

Say­ing there was not a very ef­fi­cient bus ser­vice, Cadiz added: "Facts are facts and that's what we are here to deal with."I have seen peo­ple in San Fer­nan­do where the coach from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain is $10 and yet still peo­ple would line up for two hours on the $6 ride be­cause they can­not af­ford to pay $10 to go on the coach."Say­ing such is­sues must be ad­dressed, Cadiz said he was al­so faced with the task of get­ting peo­ple from San­gre Grande to Matelot with­out wait­ing hours for the bus or "hop­ing the last bus ac­tu­al­ly ar­rives."

He added: "The pur­pose of this fo­rum is not to de­ter­mine what size bus to buy or how many seats should be on a wa­ter taxi."The pur­pose is to tell T&T this is the di­rec­tion in which we should be go­ing and then we can get down to the nuts and bolts of cre­at­ing this new tran­sit sys­tem, be­cause a tran­sit sys­tem is what we have to have."