A Developmental Bottleneck

For me, what is remarkable about UNECLAC’s study on the impact of chronic road traffic congestion in T&T has been the virtual absence of sustained public outrage at the economic loss and psycho-social injury.

Instead, we have had the typical rote responses of public officials, business organisations, and politicians that have all sounded as patchy as the roadworks regularly on display. Then Carnival competitions began in earnest, and the rest of us forgot all about it.

An assessment of TT$2.26 billion in economic loss – 1.37 percent of GDP – and the evaporation of over one month of productive time is significant enough to merit more than passing attention. Just a reminder, and for contrast, even with new thrusts in food production agricultural output remains at just about 1.5 percent of annual GDP.

ECLAC also notes that its online survey of “social impressions” was conducted over the period June 20 – September 26, 2023. This means that school holidays, which usually provide an ease in traffic, and which in 2023 spanned July 7 to September 4, had to have been captured as a positive measure.

Could be all of this was considered. But I have the feeling that the traffic problem is actually worse than is reflected in the study. There is also an impact on our dignity that easily escapes the grasp of social research, even when assessing anger, frustration, and feelings of hopelessness.

For example, there is a small depression, let’s call it a small “hole” along the northbound section of the Southern Main Road in Curepe, near the OTB establishment. Once you’re free from the traffic lower down, at the fancy intersection with the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, you can drop your guard and unwittingly take aim at the hole near the shoulder. It has been this way for years.

My son and I once witnessed a near violent crime when two hole-dodging drivers came out of their cars with murder on their minds over a tiny scratch on one of the vehicles.

It’s not irrelevant to the ECLAC study. There is considerable attention to the public policy implications of its findings. Fair enough. The buck probably stops at several points and public policy is one.

Widening and re-routing provide only temporary relief. People with fancy vehicles are also wont to declare the presence of “too many cars on the road” without offering a solution that includes a formula for determining who gets to keep their cars and who should be required to dispense with or suspend use of theirs.

Policy implications and conclusions recorded by the study focus heavily on public transportation services “including strategies to make public transportation services more accessible and attractive to commuters.”

Impressively, this suggestion is tempered by concerns regarding public safety, and the need to provide complementary “paratransit” services, ostensibly for people with disabilities and those who require off-route transits.

There is mention, as well, of the obvious, workable option of “telecommuting … to reduce the need for physical commuting especially among the professional categories of workers for whom this may be feasible.”

Now we’re talking. But this runs so afoul of current official and public culture that we may have to leave this for the next generation of public service and business leaders – lessons of the pandemic notwithstanding.

In any event, remedial measures are in most cases long-term. The ECLAC researchers remained conservative on the question of “better spatial planning” by restricting their concerns to annual and/or seasonal events.

There is clearly a need for a far more revolutionary approach. I remember discussions about this decades ago under the banner of “decentralisation.” Should local government reform in its truest sense occur, it would be natural to envisage the main cities, boroughs, and towns being disburdened from hosting central government offices and operations.

Admittedly, some of it has been happening over the years. The Ministry of Agriculture is now in Chaguanas. Passport offices now span more locations. But what are the ministries of Labour, Sport, Tourism, Rural Development, and Community Development doing in Port of Spain?

This is how governments can lead the way. But how can the private sector and other employers contribute? Telecommuting is on the menu, but so too other measures that can help transform the world of work.

All the while, and not that this should be of any comfort, but we aren’t the only ones confronting this massive monster of traffic congestion in the region.

Jamaica and Barbados are right alongside us, and in some ways even worse. They too can benefit from an ELAC reality check, even if life continues as usual beyond the initial headlines and soundbites, and this developmental bottleneck persists.