It has been frequently noted that a mere 30 minutes of heavy rainfall brings the capital city to a standstill. And last Friday, commuters discovered that an even more trivial incident—a broken water main—was also sufficient to create miles of highway traffic extending east to St Augustine and as far as Chaguanas.
It turned out that a ruptured Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) underground pipeline had caused a huge water-filled depression near the Port-of-Spain lighthouse, resulting in almost gridlock traffic for several hours. The leak reportedly started on Thursday night and, despite a WASA crew getting on the job within hours, the problem had worsened by Friday morning. From as early as 5 am, traffic started building up as commuters headed into Port-of-Spain. By 11 am, traffic on the Uriah Butler Highway had also slowed to snail’s pace as drivers tried to take the alternative Eastern Main Road, to no avail.
Could this have been avoided? Theoretically, perhaps. If the WASA crew had more expertise, the problem could have been resolved on Thursday night. And commuters themselves probably did their bit to create the traffic gridlock since, if this started as early as 5 am, it was probably due in large part to drivers slowing down to “maco” the puddle – after all, miles-long maco traffic is now a common phenomenon on the nation’s highways, often caused by nothing more amazing than a truck shut down on the shoulder.
But this event only highlighted, once again, the absence of any effective emergency plan for the capital city. It is now more than ten years since Finance Minister Colm Imbert, then holding the portfolio of Works Minister, outlined an evacuation plan for Port-of-Spain that has never become more than an outline. And it was five years ago that the Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODPM) assured that, even if a tsunami was ever on its way to the capital, there was a plan to get people safely out.
Now it is remotely possible that, in the case of emergencies, such plans might actually work. On the other hand, if the authorities find it impossible to deal with even minor disruptions, what are the chances they can deal effectively with major ones, especially when the panic factor is added in?
The core fact of this ongoing issue is that there are thousands of people continuously coming into Port-of-Spain on any given weekday to work or conduct other business. Therefore, any plan to regulate traffic in and out of the city has to start with decentralisation. Indeed, this has been on the agenda for over 30 years now. Yet, after the People’s National Movement administration got into office in 2001, then prime minister Patrick Manning threw this concept to the winds when the energy boom brought in the revenues needed for his vision of a Port-of-Spain skyline transformed by the Waterfront project. That was indeed achieved, but at the cost of more flooding problems and regress in the decentralisation project.
Given present communications technology and the 21st century economy, there is no reason why employees in many sectors cannot be equally or more productive outside of office spaces and even outside of standard working hours. If the daily traffic grind that stresses people who work in and near Port-of-Spain is to be mitigated, it must begin with a reduction of the daily numbers of vehicles coming to the city.
Only then will it be possible to implement effective traffic solutions.
