There is no ques­tion that the sea bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go has steadi­ly im­proved over the last cen­tu­ry.The ad­vent of fast fer­ries be­tween the is­lands, briefly in 1994 and for­mal­ly since 2005, has com­plete­ly changed the flu­en­cy of trans­port be­tween the two is­lands, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust hol­i­day sea­son.

The sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort put in­to im­prov­ing the ser­vice in­vest­ed by the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has led to a sub­tle but wel­come evo­lu­tion in vis­it­ing To­ba­go, which was once con­sid­ered some­thing of an ex­pe­di­tion, and is now a ca­su­al and com­fort­able sea jour­ney in air-con­di­tioned com­fort.

Which is not to say that the trans­port in­fra­struc­ture ded­i­cat­ed to the jour­ney be­tween the is­lands has been pol­ished to per­fec­tion.The two fast fer­ries, the TT Spir­it and the TT Ex­press, and the car­go ves­sel, the War­rior Spir­it, have had main­te­nance is­sues.Even get­ting to the point of putting three func­tion­ing ves­sels on the route has been a chal­lenge.

The his­to­ry of the sea bridge is lit­tered with the car­cass­es of ill-con­sid­ered pur­chas­es and ves­sels that sim­ply did not work out. The most re­cent ex­am­ple of these on­go­ing prob­lems was the de­ba­cle of the MV Su, a ves­sel that cost $55 mil­lion, de­mand­ed mil­lions more in re­pairs and berthing fees, yet nev­er sailed a day on the To­ba­go route.

Even as re­cent a project as the wa­ter taxi ini­tia­tive be­tween Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do has had its own start­up is­sues, af­ter the first ves­sels plied on the route, the HC Ka­tia, HC Olivia and HC Mi­lan­cia were laid up with­in two years of their pur­chase and sold off for the best price they could com­mand in poor con­di­tion.

It isn't as if we be­gan the sea bridge re­cent­ly. T&T has had 114 years of ex­pe­ri­ence mov­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go be­tween our is­lands, be­gin­ning with the com­mis­sion­ing of two ves­sels from the Roy­al Mail Steam Pack­et Com­pa­ny of Great Britain in 1901.T&T bought its first ship for the route in 1924, the steamship SS Be­lize.

Against that his­tor­i­cal back­drop, the Port Au­thor­i­ty should be in a po­si­tion to demon­strate greater ca­pac­i­ty to over­see the route and to de­ci­sive­ly man­age the in­evitable but steady de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the ships as­signed to the route.On Thurs­day, an an­nounce­ment at a joint press con­fer­ence by the Port Au­thor­i­ty and the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Orville Lon­don spoke hope­ful­ly of a greater com­mit­ment to just that.

In Sep­tem­ber, 900 seats aboard the T&T Spir­it, one of the two pas­sen­ger fast fer­ries will be re­placed at a cost of US$1,000 per seat.By the end of Au­gust, as part of a gen­er­al over­haul of the flaky tick­et­ing sys­tem that's been one of the weak­est points in the To­ba­go sea bridge trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence, on­line tick­et­ing for cus­tomers will be in­tro­duced.

These are wel­come de­vel­op­ments, but they may well pale in the face of the promise of im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Port Au­thor­i­ty and the THA in the plan­ning of rou­tine main­te­nance for the three ves­sels that ply the dai­ly route be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A sched­uled Oc­to­ber dry-dock ex­er­cise for one of the fast fer­ries is be­ing resched­uled around two crit­i­cal events in To­ba­go, a wel­come first step in bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween an is­land that de­pends on a func­tion­ing and ef­fi­cient sea bridge as a dai­ly life­line and the Port Au­thor­i­ty charged with en­sur­ing that it is man­aged in the best in­ter­ests of the trav­el­ling pub­lic.