Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Mo­torists and busi­ness peo­ple have wel­comed the news that park­ing me­ters will be in­stalled in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has con­firmed that the ten­der­ing process has start­ed to pro­cure the park­ing me­ters and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said he would be meet­ing with the Min­istry of Works of­fi­cials next Tues­day to dis­cuss a paid park­ing sys­tem for the city.

Yes­ter­day, mo­torists in the cap­i­tal city said they were look­ing for­ward to the in­tro­duc­tion of me­ters as it was a dai­ly strug­gle to find park­ing, le­gal or oth­er­wise, and they al­so had to deal with traf­fic caused by in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing.

Er­rol Boodoos­ingh said he was lucky to find park­ing on the le­gal side of the road­way along In­de­pen­dence Square North yes­ter­day, so he wel­comed any ef­fort to ease the sit­u­a­tion.

“I re­alise no­body seems to be obey­ing the law, peo­ple park­ing any and every­where and I want to be­lieve the po­lice have the au­thor­i­ty to pass around and give tick­ets but noth­ing is be­ing done.

“It re­al­ly have no places to park con­ve­nient­ly and I think they should make it le­gal to park along the prom­e­nade,” he said.

A de­liv­ery dri­ver, who asked on­ly to be called David, said, “It re­al­ly dif­fi­cult, some­times you have to make six or sev­en rounds to get a park to drop off goods and then again it have plen­ty ban­dits so you can’t af­ford to park where you can’t see your ve­hi­cle be­cause they will break in­to it.”

A few me­tres away from where David sat in his ve­hi­cle at the cor­ner of In­de­pen­dence Square and Aber­crom­by Street, ve­hi­cles were parked on both sides of the street and on­ly one of the three lanes was ac­ces­si­ble, re­strict­ing the flow of traf­fic.

Head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said the park­ing sit­u­a­tion ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in the city.

“The lack of an or­gan­ised sys­tem has been one of the great­est de­ter­rents in our ef­forts to re­vise com­merce in down­town Port-of-Spain and the city cen­tre, so we want to thank the Gov­ern­ment again for recog­nis­ing that park­ing me­ters and an or­gan­ised rule for park­ing is most wel­come and most ap­pre­ci­at­ed and a very im­por­tant in­stru­ment of con­fi­dence and sup­port for us as we con­tem­plate what lies ahead for the city of Port-of-Spain,” he said.

How­ev­er, Trans­porta­tion Plan­ner and Traf­fic En­gi­neer Dr Rae Fur­longe warned that park­ing me­ters must be man­aged prop­er­ly or else the prob­lem would on­ly be shift­ed fur­ther down the road.

“If you don’t man­age it prop­er­ly, you will get peo­ple now mov­ing and park­ing in res­i­den­tial ar­eas to get away from the me­ters and take a PH taxi to work. Peo­ple will go as far as Mar­aval to park and take a taxi and come in­to town. So, it means park­ing me­ters have to be part of an over­all park­ing pro­gramme” he said.

Fur­longe ex­plained that the heavy grid­lock caused by the lack of park­ing spaces was the re­sult of some­thing he termed “park­ing and un­park­ing”.

“Many don’t see the ef­fect of peo­ple look­ing for a park in Port-of-Spain, then try­ing to get in­to the park and even peo­ple who are try­ing to get out of a park on­to the same road­way. So, the de­lay to the mov­ing traf­fic is af­fect­ed by those look­ing for a park, try­ing to get in­to the park and try­ing to leave the park,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that pri­or­i­ty be placed on “short term park­ing” at the Parkade fa­cil­i­ties.

“One of the prob­lems I have is that we should be en­cour­ag­ing short term park­ing and de­flect­ing longer term park­ing. If you go to the Parkade, the first few floors are booked by many of the busi­ness places around, so they have re­served park­ing for when­ev­er. So you see it emp­ty but you can’t park there and the on­ly place you get is to the top, so the park­ing de­mand is so high that the busi­ness places have cap­tured it, but that is not the way a city is sup­posed to func­tion,” Fur­longe said.

“As an op­er­a­tor or man­ag­er of the city, Nipdec or Ude­cott, you give pri­or­i­ty to the short term park­ing, you tell those peo­ple who want to re­serve park­ing for their staff for the month that they can’t do that. They should be giv­en a quo­ta and be placed on the top floor. You know when you go to the air­port you have to park far away as a user and the em­ploy­ees must park to the front? That is the op­po­site of how it should hap­pen.”

For more long-term park­ing, Fur­longe said, a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion was re­mote park­ing, or park and ride.

“You should be aim­ing for park­ing far away from the ur­ban cen­tres. Let’s say you’re com­ing from Ch­agua­nas to Port-of-Spain, you should be al­lowed to park in ar­eas like Ch­agua­nas for free and a shut­tle will op­er­ate all day for a small charge. You have to have a com­bi­na­tion of peak pe­ri­od shut­tles but shut­tles through­out the day for when peo­ple have to go to their car.

“You have the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties that aren’t be­ing used. Just like on the bus route, in Pitts­burgh there are park­ing lots along their bus route, so peo­ple park there and use the bus­es,” Fur­longe said.

How­ev­er, he said, the main so­lu­tion should be a re­li­able pub­lic trans­port sys­tem to end the love af­fair peo­ple have with bring­ing their cars in­to the city.

“We do not have an ef­fi­cient pub­lic trans­port sys­tem. Of course, we don’t have that but that is where our gov­ern­ment is cheat­ing us, all gov­ern­ments, PNM and UNC,” he said.

DO­MA said it was in­ter­est­ed in any so­lu­tion that did not in­volve the wreck­ers which have been ground­ed since the pan­dem­ic.

“We know that this whole ques­tion of wreck­ing has de­stroyed jobs, has hurt Port-of-Spain more than any­thing, has hurt Wood­brook and dri­ven a lot of busi­ness off pri­vate streets and in­to pub­lic com­pounds,” Aboud said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ali Mo­hammed, who over­sees the Port-of-Spain dis­trict, to asked about the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s plan for tack­ling in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing in the cap­i­tal.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed said yes­ter­day was his first day as se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent for the city and he asked for a few days to get a han­dle on things.