At 5.30 am, Keisha Levine stood strand­ed on the pri­or­i­ty bus route in Ari­ma, watch­ing her son anx­ious­ly check his watch ahead of a cru­cial re­gion­al ex­am—a qui­et, stress­ful mo­ment that was soon mul­ti­plied by the thou­sands as Mon­day’s maxi-taxi strike left work­ing-class com­muters across Trinidad com­plete­ly grid­locked.

The mass with­draw­al of ser­vice by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Maxi Taxi T&T (AMTTT) turned ma­jor trans­port hubs like City Gate in­to ghost towns, leav­ing work­ing-class cit­i­zens scram­bling and forc­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents on­to con­gest­ed roads to seek al­ter­na­tive tran­sit.

The cri­sis has reignit­ed a fierce na­tion­al de­bate sur­round­ing state trans­port pol­i­cy and has laid bare deep struc­tur­al weak­ness­es in T&T’s pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, with trans­porta­tion con­sul­tant Dr Trevor Townsend warn­ing that the dis­rup­tion re­flects decades of ne­glect and the ab­sence of a uni­fied au­thor­i­ty to man­age the sec­tor.

While frus­trat­ed com­muters faced long queues and lost wages, trans­port an­a­lysts warned against fram­ing the protest as an act of bad faith by op­er­a­tors.

Speak­ing on the me­chan­ics of the cri­sis, Ro­han Sinanan, who served as min­is­ter of works and trans­port from Oc­to­ber 2015 to April 2015, em­pha­sised that trans­porta­tion op­er­ates as the ab­solute lifeblood of a na­tion­al econ­o­my.

When it is dis­rupt­ed, the shock­waves are felt im­me­di­ate­ly across every sec­tor, from busi­ness­es los­ing man-hours to pa­tients miss­ing crit­i­cal hos­pi­tal ap­point­ments.

“I would not light­ly sup­port any ac­tion that leaves com­muters strand­ed or caus­es hard­ship to the pub­lic,” Sinanan stat­ed, adding, “How­ev­er, from what has been re­port­ed, the is­sues raised by the maxi-taxi op­er­a­tors are not friv­o­lous. They re­late to mat­ters such as the reg­u­la­tion of PH (pri­vate hire) ve­hi­cles, ac­cess arrange­ments, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, the cost of op­er­at­ing, ter­mi­nal con­di­tions, pay­ments for school trans­port ser­vices, and the need for com­mit­ments made in meet­ings to be con­vert­ed in­to ac­tu­al de­ci­sions and im­ple­men­ta­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sinanan, the de­scent in­to a na­tion­al strike re­flects a fun­da­men­tal break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, shared goals and ac­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion with­in the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tive frame­work.

He not­ed that dur­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al tenure, the state main­tained an open-door pol­i­cy, ac­tive­ly util­is­ing the maxi taxi ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee to ad­dress griev­ances be­fore they reached a flash­point.

“From my ex­pe­ri­ence with the maxi-taxi as­so­ci­a­tions, these are not stake­hold­ers who ide­al­ly want to reach the stage of with­hold­ing ser­vice,” Sinanan said as he added, “They know their im­por­tance to the trav­el­ling pub­lic. If they have reached this point, it sug­gests that the for­mal struc­tures for di­a­logue and fol­low-through have not worked as they should. The maxi-taxi sec­tor was de­signed to com­bine Gov­ern­ment’s reg­u­la­to­ry role with pri­vate ini­tia­tive. Over time, it has grown in­to an in­dis­pens­able part of pub­lic trans­port. It there­fore has to be treat­ed as a part­ner in the na­tion­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem, not as an af­ter­thought.”

This view is shared by Townsend, a for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC), who ar­gued that suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have spent decades op­er­at­ing in a short-sight­ed “cri­sis mode,” treat­ing pri­vate tran­sit op­er­a­tors—who run a vi­brant, mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try—as a pol­i­cy af­ter­thought while pour­ing mas­sive tax­pay­er funds in­to state ser­vices that bare­ly move the pop­u­la­tion.

“The prob­lem is they have a ma­jor sup­ply of trans­port that has been, from what they are say­ing, ig­nored by the ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Townsend ex­plained, stat­ing, “Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have re­al­ly not put in place what should be done to prop­er­ly plan, man­age and ad­min­is­ter the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem. They tend to fo­cus on­ly on PTSC, which is a small play­er, al­though it takes a lot of mon­ey from the tax­pay­er.”

The ‘PH’ haz­ard

This struc­tur­al ne­glect has reg­u­lar, dan­ger­ous con­se­quences for the trav­el­ling pub­lic.

As for­mal, le­gal op­er­a­tors strike over un­ad­dressed griev­ances—in­clud­ing frozen high­way speed lim­its, es­ca­lat­ing crime and bro­ken fi­nan­cial promis­es—a reg­u­la­to­ry vac­u­um opens. This vac­u­um has cleared the way for il­le­gal, com­plete­ly un­mon­i­tored “PH” cars to step in and ex­ploit des­per­ate com­muters.

“Why has PH be­come nec­es­sary? What is the gap in the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem that is not be­ing filled by le­gal op­er­a­tors, and why has that been al­lowed to flour­ish with­out any­body do­ing any­thing about it?” Townsend asked, warn­ing of the se­vere hu­man cost of an un­man­aged net­work. “We are one more mur­der of some poor young la­dy who hap­pened to en­ter the wrong PH car away from an­oth­er pub­lic out­cry about why is this al­lowed to hap­pen. A taxi dri­ver has to have his taxi badge. A PH dri­ver is any­body who just picks up any­body.”

The il­lu­sion of the PTSC safe­ty net

A cen­tral point of fric­tion in na­tion­al tran­sit pol­i­cy is the state-backed PTSC.

When­ev­er pri­vate op­er­a­tors with­draw their ser­vices, the pub­lic looks to the state bus­es to fill the void. How­ev­er, both Townsend and Sinanan dis­miss the idea that PTSC can act as an ef­fec­tive safe­ty net dur­ing a cri­sis.

Townsend shared that da­ta from a 2019 mar­ket share study re­vealed that PTSC cap­tures a mere two per cent of dai­ly com­muters na­tion­wide. The re­main­ing 98 per cent re­ly en­tire­ly on pri­vate max­is and taxis.

“PTSC has an im­por­tant role to play, but PTSC and the maxi-taxi sec­tor were nev­er in­tend­ed to be sim­ple sub­sti­tutes for each oth­er,” Sinanan ex­plained, adding that they should ide­al­ly op­er­ate as com­ple­men­tary parts of a broad­er hub-and-spoke sys­tem.

In this mod­el, PTSC would pro­vide struc­tured bus ser­vices on ma­jor cor­ri­dors and strate­gic routes, while maxi-taxis pro­vide flex­i­ble, high-vol­ume ser­vice across es­tab­lished route bands and com­mu­ni­ties.

Sinanan ad­mit­ted that PTSC con­tin­ues to face deep struc­tur­al chal­lenges, in­clu­sive of an age­ing fleet, a wide va­ri­ety of bus makes and mod­els, dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing such a di­verse fleet, and op­er­a­tional sys­tems that do not sup­port max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy.

While projects were ad­vanced dur­ing his tenure to pur­chase 100 new bus­es and eval­u­ate en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient fleets un­der an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team, the lega­cy con­straints re­main heavy.

“No re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment would sug­gest that PTSC, with its known con­straints, could sim­ply ab­sorb the full pas­sen­ger load of the maxi-taxi sys­tem dur­ing a na­tion­al strike,” Sinanan stat­ed.

He de­clined to quote a sin­gle fig­ure for the an­nu­al main­te­nance cost of the cor­po­ra­tion with­out ver­i­fy­ing spe­cif­ic fis­cal years, but ac­knowl­edged that the op­er­a­tional al­lo­ca­tion runs deep in­to the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly.

“It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that pub­lic trans­port is not judged on­ly by whether it makes a prof­it. Around the world, pub­lic trans­port is sub­sidised be­cause it sup­ports pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, ac­cess to work, so­cial mo­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

The core prob­lem, ac­cord­ing to Townsend, is the in­ef­fi­cient na­ture of these state sub­si­dies. He drew a sharp dis­tinc­tion be­tween “user sub­si­dies”—which low­er fares for vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions—and “pro­duc­er sub­si­dies,” which in­su­late state agen­cies from their own op­er­a­tional in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

Re­flect­ing on his tenure at PTSC in the 1990s, Townsend not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion once aimed to op­er­ate with an an­nu­al state sub­sidy of less than $100 mil­lion, with the ul­ti­mate goal of achiev­ing self-suf­fi­cien­cy. To­day, state spend­ing heav­i­ly funds pro­duc­er sub­si­dies in­stead of tar­get­ed con­sumer re­lief. Townsend point­ed to his­tor­i­cal stud­ies con­duct­ed on na­tion­al tran­sit costs to il­lus­trate the dis­par­i­ty. The true op­er­a­tional cost for a sin­gle pas­sen­ger trip on the state-run wa­ter taxi ser­vice sits at rough­ly $120.

Bro­ken promis­es and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing hubs

The lack of an em­pow­ered in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work has di­rect­ly led to the phys­i­cal de­cline of tran­sit in­fra­struc­ture.

Com­muters and op­er­a­tors alike have long com­plained about the squalid, un­safe con­di­tions at ma­jor trans­port ter­mi­nals. While Sinanan not­ed that the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) fund­ed se­cu­ri­ty fenc­ing, booth up­grades, and in­ter­nal road works at PTSC dur­ing his term, he ac­knowl­edged that ma­jor projects like the com­pre­hen­sive City Gate up­grades and the Ari­ma trans­port hub re­mained in­com­plete works in progress.

“The ap­proach be­ing pur­sued was to deal with these is­sues as part of a wider trans­porta­tion frame­work,” Sinanan said, ref­er­enc­ing past pol­i­cy doc­u­ments that sought to in­tro­duce a “che­quered band” sys­tem to han­dle un­der­served, last-mile routes, reg­u­larise the red-band pass sys­tem, and grant green band max­is ac­cess to spe­cif­ic sec­tions of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

The aban­don­ment or slow im­ple­men­ta­tion of these long-term frame­works has left op­er­a­tors an­gry and dis­trust­ful. The pri­ma­ry griev­ance trig­ger­ing the cur­rent strike in­volves the state’s fail­ure to pay maxi-taxi op­er­a­tors con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to trans­port school chil­dren, with some out­stand­ing pay­ments stretch­ing back for months.

“Those maxi-taxis who are con­tract­ed to pro­vide ser­vices to school chil­dren on be­half of the min­istry, they have not been paid for months,” Townsend said adding, “And this is a con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ship. I know that sys­tem, be­cause when I was in PTSC, we start­ed that sys­tem, and we nev­er had that prob­lem. That was way back in the 1990s. So that is just one ex­am­ple of the prob­lem. They’re not be­ing ir­ra­tional.”

The in­sti­tu­tion­al so­lu­tion: A Tran­sit Au­thor­i­ty

To break the ex­haust­ing cy­cle of tran­sit strikes, emer­gency min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tions, and strand­ed cit­i­zens, T&T must tran­si­tion away from ad-hoc man­age­ment. The cur­rent sys­tem re­lies on a re­volv­ing door of Cab­i­net com­mit­tees and pub­lic ser­vants who lack spe­cialised ex­per­tise in trans­port lo­gis­tics. When pol­i­cy shifts with every ad­min­is­tra­tive cy­cle, long-term as­set man­age­ment plan­ning be­comes com­plete­ly im­pos­si­ble.

“If I ask you a ques­tion, who is in charge of pub­lic trans­port in this coun­try?” Townsend asked. “And if you tell me it’s the Min­is­ter of Trans­port, I would say the Min­is­ter is in Cab­i­net. And so who is run­ning it on a day-to-day ba­sis? Who is plan­ning it on a day-to-day ba­sis? We have in­sti­tu­tions to build high­ways, to build drains, to pro­vide wa­ter. We have no in­sti­tu­tion re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic trans­port.”

The long-term roadmap re­quires the im­me­di­ate en­act­ment of the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Pol­i­cy and the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of a 20-year Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan, which was pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vanced in dis­cus­sions with in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing agen­cies like the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and CAF.

The crown jew­el of this pol­i­cy re­form is the for­mal es­tab­lish­ment of an in­de­pen­dent tran­sit au­thor­i­ty. This statu­to­ry body would re­move tran­sit plan­ning from the im­me­di­ate po­lit­i­cal are­na, plac­ing it in the hands of lo­gis­tics pro­fes­sion­als, ur­ban plan­ners, and trans­port econ­o­mists.

Sinanan in­sist­ed that “the trans­port sec­tor should not be man­aged by the whim and fan­cy of any po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tor or any one per­son’s per­son­al­i­ty. It re­quires pol­i­cy, da­ta, sta­tis­tics, in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and sus­tained di­a­logue.”