Sinanan: 1 million vehicles in TT

IN A country with a population of 1.3 million people, there are close to one million vehicles.

So said Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan last Friday at the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC)’s bus-viewing ceremony and lighting of the PTSC building, at City Gate on South Quay, Port of Spain.

Stakeholders got an opportunity to view and ride in the refurbished buses and were also given a quick tour of the PTSC compound.

In an address to the stakeholders, Sinanan said the number of vehicles was the reason for several problems on the roads, including traffic, pollution and damage to infrastructure.

“We have a serious problem with transport in TT. We have traffic jams as you come out of your driveway. We have 1.3 million people and one million vehicles. And almost everyone wants to use their vehicle at the same time.

“There is no way, as a government ,we can build ourselves out of that traffic jam.”

Although he did not give an exact figure, he pointed out the number did not just include cars, but commercial vehicles, trucks and other vehicles.

Sinanan said the culture of resorting to driving your own car, instead of using public transport, needs to be changed, and the ministry intends to start by increasing the fleet of PTSC buses by 2021. He said Cabinet had approved the purchase of 300 new buses, and the PTSC has also refurbished nine in a bid to maintain the current fleet. Sinanan said the country needed a maximum of 500 buses for the PTSC to operate at full capacity.

He noted several things thePTSC would have to do to help change the culture to one of travelling by public transport, saying it had things left to be desired in customer service and maintaining buses.

“The reason we decided to go for 300 buses instead of 25 buses every year is, we recognise that we bring 25 buses every year, but we keep about 14. We are not going to just go out and buy new buses, we are going to develop a whole new management system – how we maintain buses and how we operate the buses,” Sinanan said.

PTSC general manager Basher Mohammed said efforts to maintain the buses had saved taxpayers close to $1 million.

“Our guys have been spending time and energy refurbishing the buses that are nine years old and we have added eight years to that,” Mohammed said. “In addition the corporation is introducing a fleet management system that will provide greater preventative maintenance management, which in turn will result in less downtime and mitigate the frequency of unscheduled service disruption.”