Af­ter an­oth­er mas­sive grid­lock as a re­sult of a fa­tal­i­ty on the Beetham High­way yes­ter­day and a re­minder from the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) that the av­er­age Trinida­di­an spends more than a month and year in traf­fic jams, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing for ur­gent changes.

AM­CHAM TT, in re­spond­ing to Guardian me­dia ques­tions, said the im­pact on traf­fic for every­one was ex­treme­ly high and the hours wast­ed in traf­fic are not pro­duc­tive as it neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts fam­i­lies and qual­i­ty of life.  

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said T&T needs an ef­fi­cient mass tran­sit sys­tem.

“This is im­pact­ed by safe­ty–re­al­i­ty and per­cep­tion. If peo­ple don’t gen­er­al­ly feel safe, they will avoid pub­lic trans­porta­tion as much as they can. So, crime al­so af­fects traf­fic.”

The cham­ber out­lined that there have been many stud­ies and so­lu­tions pro­posed.  

“It is our un­der­stand­ing that the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment  (IDB) pro­posed a rapid bus sys­tem not so long ago. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the en­tire in­fra­struc­ture of the coun­try needs to be up­grad­ed. We know the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port had been do­ing con­sul­ta­tions on this last year. The goal should be to move the most peo­ple with the least num­ber of ve­hi­cles,” the busi­ness group said.

In giv­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, the cham­ber said in ad­di­tion to at­tempts to widen the roads and pos­si­bly im­ple­ment an ex­pand­ed bus sys­tem, there needs to be en­force­ment of the laws that lead to ad­di­tion­al con­ges­tion.  

“The im­puni­ty of block­ing the road­way in be­tween the chang­ing of traf­fic lights, dri­ving on the shoul­der and caus­ing con­ges­tion when fil­ter­ing etc, should be elim­i­nat­ed. Fur­ther, more ef­fi­cient in­ci­dent re­sponse and clear­ance would re­duce the very sig­nif­i­cant im­pact that an ac­ci­dent has on traf­fic for sev­er­al hours af­ter the ac­ci­dent,” the group added.

T&T Cham­ber

Giv­ing its per­spec­tive on the on­go­ing prob­lem, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce said busi­ness­es can re­view their op­er­a­tions and de­ter­mine on a case-by-case ba­sis, whether it may be fea­si­ble to of­fer a re­mote work op­tion.

The busi­ness group be­lieves that pos­si­ble so­lu­tions that can be con­sid­ered would be car­pool­ing; en­cour­age­ment to use pub­lic trans­porta­tion (eg bus­es and wa­ter taxis), where pos­si­ble to re­duce the num­ber of cars on the na­tion’s road­ways; flex­i­ble work­ing hours as de­ter­mined by em­ploy­ers once it’s fea­si­ble.  

“It may al­so be worth­while to con­sid­er ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness re­views of the traf­fic plans which in­clude one-way streets, park­ing zones; ad­di­tion­al car parks with pub­lic trans­port routes based on the park and ride mod­el in oth­er coun­tries; and in­cen­tives for car­pool­ing such as a spe­cial lane on the high­ways which makes the com­mute faster,” the T&T cham­ber pro­posed.

Some of these so­lu­tions, it added, may re­quire pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships and the cham­ber would sup­port di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment to re­view and de­vel­op plans to ad­dress the mat­ter.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber

Al­so weigh­ing in on the sit­u­a­tion, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said traf­fic con­ges­tion with­in the bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas im­pacts busi­ness­es neg­a­tive­ly as they lose an av­er­age of three pro­duc­tive hours per day. Ma­haraj not­ed the cham­ber is aware of the on­go­ing works along the high­way that would re­duce con­ges­tion dur­ing peak hours. How­ev­er, he said one of the ma­jor is­sues in the bor­ough was get­ting from East to West.  

“The third lane on the high­way will as­sist those trav­el­ling along the high­way. We are very fa­mil­iar with the fa­mous PriceS­mart round­about that fil­ters traf­fic in all di­rec­tions. This is a vir­tu­al grid­lock dur­ing peak hours. Build­ing ei­ther two over­pass­es or tun­nels in the short term would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the time it takes to get from east to west of the high­way or vice ver­sa,” he said.

Fyz­abad Cham­ber

Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ang­ie Jairam sug­gest­ed that de­cen­tral­is­ing the ser­vices sec­tor in a re­al way will help.

Jairam said this coun­try’s re­al prob­lem was plan­ning, and this has been lack­ing for too long.

“What is hap­pen­ing with our pub­lic trans­port sys­tem? This is an easy fix to make it at­trac­tive, ef­fi­cient, easy to ac­cess, and safe through­out our coun­try ... Why are we not in­tro­duc­ing park-and-ride in the very busy ar­eas? Crime is a re­al fac­tor, very few want to take pub­lic trans­porta­tion as it is un­safe to trav­el due to the crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in our coun­try. Hence every­one prefers to use their ve­hi­cles for a sense of com­fort,” she said.

 Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers said it views with deep con­cern the amount of time tak­en for peo­ple who re­side in the east­ern, cen­tral, and south­ern parts of Trinidad as they tra­verse in­to Port-of-Spain.

“There needs to be a se­ri­ous ef­fort by the Gov­ern­ment to look at a de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion plan to move cer­tain min­istries and even oth­er pub­lic sec­tor ser­vices in dif­fer­ent zones, so we will not have that vol­ume of traf­fic in­to the cap­i­tal city dai­ly,” the cham­ber not­ed.

In ad­di­tion, the cham­ber said the traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems re­main in a back­ward state, and no new or in­no­v­a­tive think­ing is be­ing brought for­ward to ad­dress this very press­ing is­sue.

Sinanan: An im­proved bus ser­vice can ad­dress the prob­lem short term

When con­tact­ed, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the traf­fic prob­lem could be ad­dressed by an im­proved bus ser­vice in the short term fol­lowed by a long-term ad­just­ment through road up­grades.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed the cost of im­ple­ment­ing such is a chal­lenge cur­rent­ly, but it re­mains an op­tion for the fu­ture.