AN­DREA PEREZ-SOBERS

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The on­go­ing maxi taxi strike has trig­gered a surge in de­mand for al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion ser­vices, with ride-share op­er­a­tors re­port­ing in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty while taxi dri­vers voiced sup­port for the con­cerns raised by maxi op­er­a­tors.

TT Rideshare Ltd ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Dwight House­nd told Guardian Me­dia that the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed to the dis­rup­tion by re­duc­ing com­mis­sions charged to dri­vers and of­fer­ing dis­count­ed fares to com­muters strug­gling to get to work, school and oth­er des­ti­na­tions.

The com­pa­ny low­ered its com­mis­sion on trips from 20 per cent to 15 per cent un­til Wednes­day night and in­tro­duced a 10 per cent dis­count code for pas­sen­gers us­ing the plat­form.

House­nd ex­pressed con­cern about the im­pact the strike was hav­ing on the trav­el­ling pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly school­child­ren sit­ting ex­am­i­na­tions and work­ers de­pen­dent on pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

He ques­tioned what out­come the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion was in­tend­ed to achieve and whether oth­er av­enues were avail­able to re­solve the is­sues fac­ing op­er­a­tors.

The ride-share ex­ec­u­tive not­ed that de­mand for ser­vices in­creased dur­ing the strike but stressed that ride-shar­ing plat­forms are not equipped to re­place the na­tion­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

He ar­gued that mean­ing­ful di­a­logue was nec­es­sary to pre­vent fur­ther dis­rup­tion and en­sure a so­lu­tion emerges from the dis­pute.

“If noth­ing comes out of this, es­pe­cial­ly if they plan to do this for the next two days, it would be a dis­ser­vice to Trinidad,” House­nd said.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Taxi Dri­vers’ Net­work Adri­an Acos­ta said taxi op­er­a­tors had al­so ex­pe­ri­enced an in­crease in pas­sen­gers dur­ing the strike but re­mained in sol­i­dar­i­ty with maxi taxi op­er­a­tors.

Acos­ta not­ed that many of the con­cerns be­ing raised by maxi op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing is­sues in­volv­ing PH ve­hi­cles and il­le­gal trans­port op­er­a­tors, al­so af­fect taxi dri­vers.

While sup­port­ing the maxi op­er­a­tors’ po­si­tion, Acos­ta stressed that his or­gan­i­sa­tion is not con­sid­er­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and in­tends to con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with the Gov­ern­ment.

“We stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them,” Acos­ta said.

Acos­ta added that taxi dri­vers have large­ly main­tained es­tab­lished fare struc­tures de­spite the in­creased de­mand, even as re­ports emerged of some PH op­er­a­tors charg­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates dur­ing the dis­rup­tion.

Com­muters trav­el­ling along the East-West Cor­ri­dor and from cen­tral and south Trinidad in­to and out of Port-of-Spain faced an­oth­er day of trans­porta­tion chal­lenges yes­ter­day as Route Two and Three maxi taxi op­er­a­tors con­tin­ued their three-day strike.

Al­though more maxi taxis were ob­served op­er­at­ing on some routes com­pared with Mon­day, many op­er­a­tors re­mained off the road de­spite near­ly five hours of talks with Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our ear­li­er this week.

The dis­rup­tion forced thou­sands of com­muters to seek al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion, cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al de­mand for taxis, ride-share ser­vices, PH ve­hi­cles and car­pool­ing arrange­ments.