The re­sump­tion of wreck­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain this past week has re­sult­ed in the usu­al out­cry about the in­con­ve­nience and in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the mea­sure. The loud­est com­plaints have been com­ing from mem­bers of the city’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, who claim it is dri­ving away shop­pers.

It is no­table that over the many years of Port-of-Spain’s steady de­scent in­to traf­fic con­ges­tion and in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing, suc­ces­sive city ad­min­is­tra­tions have re­sort­ed to the same tried and failed strat­e­gy — wreck­ing.

May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, now 16 months in­to his tenure at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion helm, is, un­for­tu­nate­ly, fol­low­ing his pre­de­ces­sors' play­books as he at­tempts to steer the city out of its park­ing woes.

Like them, he is un­like­ly to pro­duce any mea­sur­able re­sults from the re­turn of wreck­ers. The mea­sure serves on­ly to turn park­ing on the city's streets in­to a cat-and-mouse game, with mo­torists tak­ing chances to park il­le­gal­ly, so there is hard­ly any re­lief from traf­fic, which is what the mea­sure is in­tend­ed to al­le­vi­ate.

A few days be­fore the mea­sure was rein­tro­duced, May­or Al­leyne said the re­sump­tion of park­ing en­force­ment was in­tend­ed to en­sure good egress from the city in the event of an emer­gency.

How­ev­er, while the wreck­ers have been op­er­at­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain and Ari­api­ta Av­enue and en­vi­rons, at a $500 penal­ty for every mo­torist whose ve­hi­cle gets towed, T&T’s cap­i­tal re­mains as con­gest­ed and user-un­friend­ly as ever. Cars are still parked on both sides of streets, avail­able park­ing fa­cil­i­ties are op­er­at­ing at max­i­mum and there is still the dai­ly frus­tra­tion for the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200,000 peo­ple who en­ter the city every day to work and con­duct busi­ness.

Wreck­ing sim­ply does not work and the on­ly tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits from it seem to be fees col­lect­ed by the wreck­er op­er­a­tors. It is, there­fore, time to ex­plore oth­er so­lu­tions to the city’s peren­ni­al traf­fic and park­ing woes.

At his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny in Au­gust 2023, May­or Al­leyne was chal­lenged by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to take steps to al­le­vi­ate Port-of-Spain’s wors­en­ing park­ing prob­lems. He called for the streets of the city to be man­aged with mod­ern park­ing me­ters and warned: “If you end this term with­out park­ing me­ters in the city of Port-of-Spain, you would have failed in my book.”

As the na­tion’s re­tail, ad­min­is­tra­tive and po­lit­i­cal cen­tre, there is a need for in­no­v­a­tive meth­ods to man­age park­ing and oth­er traf­fic is­sues. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue, the threat of de­clin­ing com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, with all of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall­out, could be ex­ac­er­bat­ed.

Stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly busi­ness op­er­a­tors, have been warn­ing about the death of Port-of-Spain, not­ing the park­ing prob­lem could be a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to this de­cline.

Be­fore the sit­u­a­tion gets much worse, the City Cor­po­ra­tion should be­gin ex­plor­ing smart park­ing tech­nolo­gies and sys­tems. Park­ing can be au­to­mat­ed and ­digi­tised with fees paid on a phone app for ease of use by mo­torists. These sys­tems are al­ready in op­er­a­tion in hun­dreds of cities.

Along with tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions, oth­er mea­sures that should be ex­plored in­clude build­ing more park­ing fa­cil­i­ties and the in­tro­duc­tion of a re­li­able tran­sit sys­tem that could in­clude park-and-ride fa­cil­i­ties sup­port­ed by a re­li­able in­ner city bus ser­vice.

These are just some op­tions May­or Al­leyne and his team should con­sid­er in­stead of de­fault­ing to the old, out­dat­ed wreck­ing arrange­ment. A mod­ern Port-of-Spain is on­ly pos­si­ble with the in­tro­duc­tion of 21st-cen­tu­ry op­er­at­ing sys­tems.