Raphael John-Lall

A re­cent poll shows that 60 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion sup­ports the rapid rail sys­tem, says Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. "Just yes­ter­day, I had ac­cess to an opin­ion poll on the rapid rail project and it's a sci­en­tif­ic poll and it states that 60 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is very much in favour of the project and 25 per cent are not in favour so it's an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty in favour of it," he said. Im­bert was re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, yes­ter­day.

He re­ferred to In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Ramesh De­osaran's com­ments in the Sen­ate on Tues­day when he gave sup­port to the rapid rail idea. "It makes sense...even in the Sen­ate on Tues­day Sen­a­tor De­osaran threw pi­cong at the Op­po­si­tion when he said the Gov­ern­ment should pro­ceed with the rapid rail, whether it's on a phased ba­sis or whether it's on a East-West Cor­ri­dor line," Im­bert said. "He made the point that the Gov­ern­ment should pro­ceed with it be­cause that brings T&T in­to the mod­ern world be­cause it car­ries you from Port-of-Spain to Ari­ma in just 25 min­utes, and we do need a form of mass tran­sit. "The opin­ion polls con­firm what Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran has been say­ing...it tells the Op­po­si­tion they can com­plain all they want but the coun­try needs a mass tran­sit sys­tem."

Im­bert said the on­ly prob­lem would be of peo­ple who feel that they would be in­con­ve­nienced by the rapid rail sys­tem. "The on­ly is­sue we have to re­solve are these prob­lems of peo­ple who feel that they are be­ing in­con­ve­nienced and that's why an East-West Cor­ri­dor start-up is a good so­lu­tion while we look fur­ther at those par­tic­u­lar is­sues in that part of Trinidad," he said. "We, as a gov­ern­ment, are very com­mit­ted to a mod­ern mass tran­sit sys­tem." He said con­sul­ta­tions had to be com­plet­ed be­fore any con­crete steps were be tak­en. "Con­sul­ta­tion have to be com­plet­ed...I ex­pect con­sul­ta­tions to take at least an­oth­er two months, and then we would be in a po­si­tion to make rec­om­men­da­tions for Cab­i­net to make their in­vest­ment po­si­tion," he said. "The rec­om­men­da­tions are pred­i­cat­ed up­on the out­come of the con­sul­ta­tions."