Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­spite heavy traf­fic de­lays dur­ing the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 games at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my over the week­end, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar, who served as the event’s Gold Com­man­der, said the po­lice did all they could to man­age the sit­u­a­tion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mys­tar ex­plained that the de­lays were pri­mar­i­ly caused by the high at­ten­dance of fans dur­ing the key match days and lim­it­ed ac­cess to the venue.

“This con­ges­tion has pri­mar­i­ly re­sult­ed from the lim­it­ed ac­cess routes to the venue, to­geth­er with lim­it­ed park­ing spaces and com­bined with the high vol­ume of ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic as­so­ci­at­ed with these large-scale events,” Mys­tar said.

He sug­gest­ed that go­ing for­ward, struc­tur­al ad­just­ments are need­ed, in­clud­ing more ac­cess roads to the venue, ad­di­tion­al park­ing spaces and a park-and-ride sys­tem for large-scale events.

“I must say, the TTPS, we have done all we can pos­si­bly do as it re­lates to man­ag­ing the traf­fic in that very lim­it­ed space pro­vid­ed,” he in­sist­ed.

Hun­dreds of dis­ap­point­ed fans com­plained about spend­ing hours in traf­fic, in par­tic­u­lar for Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ games against the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als (Fri­day) and Guyana Ama­zon War­riors on Sat­ur­day. Many com­plained about spend­ing over two hours in traf­fic and the un­avail­abil­i­ty of suf­fi­cient park­ing spots at the venue.

Al­so yes­ter­day, for­mer head of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, Dr Stephen Ram­roop, who at­tend­ed two games, said he opt­ed to park at South Park, San Fer­nan­do, and walk to the acad­e­my.

De­scrib­ing the traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem as poor, Ram­roop said he was among frus­trat­ed fans. Hav­ing been part of the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee for the 2007 ICC World Cup, he not­ed that there are ex­ist­ing stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures (SOPs) for large events.

“There are quite a lot of SOPs that po­lice know. The Venue Op­er­at­ing Com­mand, the VOC, which was im­ple­ment­ed in all World Cup games through­out the Caribbean. VOC means that there is a com­mand­ing cen­tre with­in the sta­di­um.”

He said one of the main steps that should be tak­en is a pre-event man­age­ment strat­e­gy in­volv­ing all stake­hold­ers to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty, whether the event is pri­vate or pub­lic. Ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an traf­fic must be kept sep­a­rate, with des­ig­nat­ed routes for sta­di­um traf­fic, he added. He al­so sug­gest­ed a prop­er­ly man­aged park-and-ride sys­tem. While this was at­tempt­ed in the past, Ram­roop said the shut­tling sys­tem turned out to be chaot­ic.

“We have a new Gov­ern­ment now; hope­ful­ly, they can ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. There are many in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions; park and ride, for ex­am­ple. There were two lanes in the ac­tu­al ac­cess to the sta­di­um, and both lanes had cars parked on ei­ther side. One lane should have been des­ig­nat­ed just for pedes­tri­ans be­cause you had pedes­tri­ans walk­ing in and out of traf­fic—that is a no-no.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the po­lice had no ra­dios, which ham­pered co­or­di­na­tion, and of­fi­cers should have been strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned at the en­try and ex­it points. Ram­roop stressed that pub­lic safe­ty must be para­mount.

“There must be a care­ful un­der­stand­ing of all events, not just those that hap­pen at Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my. Pub­lic safe­ty as a whole has to be ad­dressed, along with traf­fic man­age­ment. Any­where you have pedes­tri­ans and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of PTSC pro­vid­ing pub­lic trans­port in­fra­struc­ture—mes­sag­ing boards, man­ag­ing high­way routes, al­ter­na­tive routes, and ad­just­ing lanes from two-way to one-way—must all be planned in ad­vance. And there must be table­top ex­er­cis­es to en­sure every­one knows the plan.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to UDe­COTT, which con­trols the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, but up to press time there was no re­sponse.