DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ap­pear to be at odds over re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for is­sues raised by maxi taxi op­er­a­tors dur­ing this week’s in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

Among the op­er­a­tors’ con­cerns are long­stand­ing calls for up­grades to maxi taxi hubs and ter­mi­nals.

Op­er­a­tors said that when they raised the mat­ter with Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing on Mon­day, they were told re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fa­cil­i­ties falls un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, through the min­istry’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, in­di­cat­ed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with the Min­istry of Trans­port.

As ques­tions con­tin­ue over which min­istry is re­spon­si­ble for ad­dress­ing op­er­a­tors’ con­cerns, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke has weighed in on gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to in­tro­duce a check­ered-band maxi taxi sys­tem.

Clarke urged op­er­a­tors seek­ing to tran­si­tion in­to the pro­posed frame­work to en­sure their ve­hi­cles are ful­ly com­pli­ant, in­clud­ing ob­tain­ing the nec­es­sary taxi badges and main­tain­ing valid in­spec­tion stick­ers and oth­er re­quired doc­u­men­ta­tion.

The pro­posed check­ered-band sys­tem is in­tend­ed to for­malise trans­port ser­vices in rur­al and sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties cur­rent­ly served large­ly by in­for­mal op­er­a­tors.

Un­der a draft pol­i­cy de­vel­oped by the for­mer Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, op­er­a­tors would be in­te­grat­ed in­to a reg­u­lat­ed net­work fea­tur­ing des­ig­nat­ed routes, stands and stops, stricter en­force­ment mea­sures, up­dat­ed op­er­at­ing stan­dards and the pos­si­ble in­tro­duc­tion of cash­less pay­ment sys­tems.

The pro­pos­al iden­ti­fies com­mu­ni­ties in­clud­ing To­co, Matelot, Biche, Cau­ra, Lopinot and Tabaquite as ar­eas with lim­it­ed trans­port op­tions and grow­ing de­mand for re­li­able pub­lic trans­porta­tion. It al­so seeks to im­prove pas­sen­ger safe­ty, ve­hi­cle stan­dards and ac­count­abil­i­ty while pro­vid­ing com­muters with greater av­enues for re­dress in the event of ac­ci­dents.

Phase One of the pi­lot pro­gramme was slat­ed to be­gin be­tween Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, with the pro­posed Route 1A cor­ri­dor from Blan­chisseuse, Las Cuevas and Mara­cas to Port-of-Spain ear­marked as the first route for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Mean­while, trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer and plan­ner Kather­ine Agong is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to view the dis­pute as a warn­ing about the state of the coun­try’s pub­lic trans­porta­tion net­work.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via Zoom, Agong said the shut­down high­light­ed both the crit­i­cal role maxi taxis play in mov­ing thou­sands of com­muters each day and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of a sys­tem that re­mains heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on a sin­gle mode of trans­port.

She not­ed that maxi taxis form part of a broad­er pub­lic trans­porta­tion net­work that al­so in­cludes PTSC bus­es.

Agong said Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with­out a co­or­di­nat­ed pub­lic trans­port au­thor­i­ty ca­pa­ble of plan­ning, man­ag­ing and reg­u­lat­ing the sec­tor, de­spite sim­i­lar pro­pos­als be­ing dis­cussed for decades.

She ar­gued that the cur­rent stand­off presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ad­dress long-stand­ing con­cerns raised by op­er­a­tors while pur­su­ing broad­er re­forms aimed at cre­at­ing a more re­li­able and sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

“We must all now ac­cept, once and for all, how im­por­tant maxi taxis are to our pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Im­prov­ing the PTSC bus ser­vice is some­thing that is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary. The maxi taxis, in my opin­ion, are here to stay and are cru­cial for pro­vid­ing trans­port for every­one who needs it, whether to go to work, at­tend a hos­pi­tal or med­ical ap­point­ment, go to school or con­duct busi­ness.

“Peo­ple should have op­tions in how they choose to trav­el, and the maxi taxi is one that should be sup­port­ed and main­tained for the fu­ture.”

While the UNC’s 2025 man­i­festo does not specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress maxi taxi op­er­a­tions, it out­lines a broad­er vi­sion for trans­form­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion through an elec­tri­fied bus fleet fi­nanced un­der a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­el re­quir­ing no di­rect gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the man­i­festo, pri­vate in­vestors would fund both the ac­qui­si­tion and op­er­a­tion of elec­tric bus­es, with the tran­si­tion from diesel-pow­ered ve­hi­cles pro­ject­ed to re­duce to­tal own­er­ship costs by 40 per cent.

The par­ty ar­gues that the sav­ings could im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery with­out in­creas­ing fares while re­duc­ing emis­sions and im­prov­ing air qual­i­ty.

The man­i­festo al­so pro­pos­es ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems to op­ti­mise bus routes in re­al time, re­duce con­ges­tion and im­prove trav­el times. It states that the tech­nol­o­gy would help min­imise pas­sen­ger wait­ing times and im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of the trans­port net­work.

To mod­ernise fare col­lec­tion, the man­i­festo pro­pos­es pre­paid cards and dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems aimed at elim­i­nat­ing cash trans­ac­tions, im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and re­duc­ing fare eva­sion.

The doc­u­ment al­so pledges job se­cu­ri­ty for unionised work­ers and pro­pos­es op­por­tu­ni­ties for stock own­er­ship in the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion as a means of in­creas­ing em­ploy­ee par­tic­i­pa­tion in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In ad­di­tion, the man­i­festo calls for the es­tab­lish­ment of a trans­port reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty tasked with over­see­ing op­er­a­tions, mon­i­tor­ing per­for­mance stan­dards, and con­duct­ing pe­ri­od­ic ser­vice and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion re­views to en­sure safe­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy and ser­vice qual­i­ty across the sec­tor.