For hun­dreds of stu­dents and com­muters, yes­ter­day morn­ing was more than frus­trat­ing — it was a warn­ing.

A col­lapsed WASA pipeline on the Beetham High­way turned a rou­tine trip in­to hours of grid­lock. Chil­dren were late for school. Work­ers ar­rived late or missed the en­tire day. It was a stark re­minder that Port-of-Spain is still a city with nowhere to go when dis­as­ter strikes.

This paral­y­sis is not new. Traf­fic snarls are dai­ly oc­cur­rences in Port-of-Spain. Some days the city crawls; oth­er days it stops en­tire­ly. And it’s not sim­ply a mat­ter of “too many cars.”

WASA’s fre­quent pipeline col­laps­es are just one trig­ger for chaos; traf­fic ac­ci­dents and even some­thing as or­di­nary as a fall­en tree branch block­ing a lane around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah can grid­lock the city for hours.

Ge­og­ra­phy is an­oth­er fac­tor. Port-of-Spain is hemmed in be­tween the Gulf of Paria and the North­ern Range, with on­ly a hand­ful of choke points — the Churchill Roo­sevelt and Beetham high­ways, Wright­son Road, and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route — fun­nelling tens of thou­sands of ve­hi­cles in and out. When one clogs, the whole city stalls.

For more than a decade, cit­i­zens have been told that a city “egress” or evac­u­a­tion plan is ei­ther com­plete, im­mi­nent, or just around the cor­ner. Yet the cap­i­tal still lacks a test­ed route for get­ting peo­ple out safe­ly in an emer­gency. Pro­pos­als for park-and-ride sys­tems, stag­gered work hours, cy­cling lanes, and con­ges­tion charges have cir­cu­lat­ed for years. None has been im­ple­ment­ed at scale. Evac­u­a­tion plans promised since 2010 re­main un­fin­ished — leav­ing Port-of-Spain not just con­gest­ed, but dan­ger­ous­ly ex­posed.

The sto­ry is painful­ly fa­mil­iar. In 2010, of­fi­cials boast­ed that a City Mass Egress Plan was com­plet­ed. By 2011, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) said tests were be­ing pre­pared. In 2012, both par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and the ODPM con­firmed the plan ex­ist­ed. And then — si­lence. Every few years the is­sue resur­faces: ed­i­to­ri­als raise alarms, com­mit­tees promise re­views, cit­i­zens are as­sured the plan is be­ing worked on. Af­ter flash floods in Oc­to­ber 2023, the Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter told the Sen­ate a “prop­er evac­u­a­tion plan” was be­ing de­vel­oped, even as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice urged the City Cor­po­ra­tion to pri­ori­tise dis­as­ter plan­ning.

Now, in 2025, Port-of-Spain re­mains as vul­ner­a­ble as ever. Floods, fires, or oth­er ma­jor events, nat­ur­al or man­made, would leave tens of thou­sands trapped in a city with nar­row ex­its and frag­ile in­fra­struc­ture.

The con­stant cy­cle of promis­es and un­fin­ished plans is a fail­ure in it­self — proof that dis­as­ter man­age­ment has been treat­ed as a bu­reau­crat­ic box to tick, not a life-sav­ing pri­or­i­ty.

T&T can­not af­ford to wait for tragedy to make the point. The gov­ern­ment, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, and the ODPM must de­liv­er a test­ed, op­er­a­tional evac­u­a­tion plan — or be hon­est with cit­i­zens about why, af­ter 15 years, the cap­i­tal still has no way out.

Port-of-Spain’s grid­lock isn’t in­evitable. It is the prod­uct of choic­es not made, projects aban­doned, and laws un­en­forced. Un­til lead­ers tack­le pub­lic trans­port, traf­fic man­age­ment, and ur­ban plan­ning de­ci­sive­ly, one bro­ken pipeline, one down­pour, or one ac­ci­dent will be enough to paral­yse the city. The cost of in­ac­tion is mea­sured not in min­utes lost, but in lives at risk.

The ques­tion is ur­gent: how long must cit­i­zens wait be­fore words are re­placed with ac­tion?