Tau­reef Mo­hammed

The lack of park­ing in Port-of-Spain's stran­gling the cap­i­tal city, but with the build­ing of more park­ing fa­cil­i­ties and es­tab­lish­ment of a re­li­able tran­sit sys­tem, in­clud­ing re-in­tro­duc­tion of tram and train sys­tems, the city can be saved, says Gre­go­ry Aboud, head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma).Last week, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed on the park­ing cri­sis fac­ing the city, high­light­ing that the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza Parkade was al­ready be­ing filled to ca­pac­i­ty al­though the plaza is yet to open.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Aboud said: "We wish to em­phat­i­cal­ly point out that the lack of park­ing is a more se­ri­ous threat to the city of PoS than crime, clean­li­ness or va­grancy."It re­mains one of the most for­mi­da­ble prob­lems fac­ing the cap­i­tal city and it is not dra­mat­ic in any way to say the lack of park­ing com­bined with the ruth­less tow­ing of ve­hi­cles is stran­gling the city to death."

He dis­agreed with the no­tion, put for­ward by for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee-Sing, that there was no need to build ad­di­tion­al park­ing fa­cil­i­ties."Ur­gent ac­tion is need­ed on the ques­tion of park­ing which in­cludes the need for cen­tralised mul­ti-storey park­ing fa­cil­i­ties," Aboud said."We al­ready know that re­li­able mul­ti-lev­el park­ing is the prin­ci­ple ini­tia­tive of many of the met­ro­pol­i­tan man­age­ment tech­niques that have saved cities all across the de­vel­oped world."

Be­fore im­ple­ment­ing park-and-ride sys­tems and pedes­tri­an­is­ing ar­eas, he added, a re­li­able pub­lic trans­port sys­tem had to be es­tab­lished."All of the talk of pedis­tri­an­i­sa­tion and park-and-ride is to­tal­ly pre­ma­ture and en­tire­ly out­side of re­al­i­ty giv­en the sham­bles of the cur­rent na­tion­al trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture," Aboud said."We first need or­gan­ised pe­riph­er­al park­ing that is safe. We al­so need to see a strength­en­ing of or­gan­ised mass tran­sit, in­clud­ing a re­li­able in­ner city bus ser­vice."

"Of course, we wish that we still had a tram sys­tem and train sys­tem but that sad­ly is not the case."Al­lan Thomas, own­er of Thomas & Sons, said a ma­jor ob­sta­cle to im­ple­ment­ing park­ing and traf­fic man­age­ment ini­tia­tives in the city is un­reg­u­lat­ed and il­le­gal vend­ing."The park-and-ride is a good idea but roads must al­so be free of con­ges­tion. We can't have ven­dors lin­ing the roads, oth­er­wise the sys­tem will be just as ir­ri­tat­ing."

Thomas said ven­dors con­tributed to the park­ing cri­sis by park­ing their ve­hi­cles overnight on the streets."A sys­tem is need­ed to reg­u­late ven­dors in the city. A lot of ven­dors park their cars overnight on the streets. Some of them hang their items on your win­dows and if you try to move them, they will bust your win­dows. These things are very dis­cour­ag­ing to in­vestors.""We were promised by sev­er­al min­istries and may­ors that Sal­va­tori site will be used as a car park but it was giv­en to ven­dors," Thomas added.

Talk but no ac­tion

Aboud blamed suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments for the cur­rent state of af­fairs, say­ing they nev­er had any re­al in­ter­est in the city."In Trinidad suc­ces­sive changes of gov­ern­ment have brought ze­ro ac­tion. The fact is that lo­cal and cen­tral gov­ern­ments had no fi­nan­cial in­ter­est or stake in POS and all of their min­is­te­r­i­al and gov­ern­men­tal po­si­tions will be un­af­fect­ed re­gard­less of whether POS lives or dies."

Thomas said, "Af­ter all these years, af­ter all these tech­nocrats ad­dressed us, it is shock­ing that there is no plan for the city ex­cept to run a ca­ble car from City Gate to Fort Pic­ton."Wary that pre­vi­ous talks with gov­ern­ments have brought no mean­ing­ful change, Aboud said he looks for­ward to work­ing with a com­mit­tee es­tab­lished by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie and chaired by Richard Young.

"We are ex­treme­ly hope­ful that mea­sures will soon be con­sid­ered by the com­mit­tee which has al­ready set about for­mu­lat­ing plans for im­ple­men­ta­tion in the very im­me­di­ate short term."The plans are in­tend­ed to ad­dress the chron­ic short­age of park­ing, se­cu­ri­ty is­sues that are re­lat­ed to day­time and night-time busi­ness and oth­er is­sues re­lat­ed to the emer­gency re­sus­ci­ta­tion of POS."

"The fact that all avail­able park­ing fa­cil­i­ties are op­er­at­ing at max­i­mum in­clud­ing the parkade is a clear in­di­ca­tion that time is not on our side and that the need for at­ten­tion is ur­gent and des­per­ate," Aboud added.