Govt to invest in monorail system

IN JUNE 2005, Government will decide whether or not it will invest in the establishment of a light monorail system along the East-West and North-South corridors of Trinidad, as it seeks to initiate major surgery on Trinidad and Tobago’s transportation system. This was revealed yesterday by Works and Transport Minister Franklyn Khan, during a break in Caricom/US Open Sky negotiations at the Ministry’s Port-of-Spain headquarters. Commenting on recent concerns raised by maxi taxi drivers, Khan agreed that their concerns had both national security and transport dimensions. “We have a National Transportation Study (NHS) that is about to start within a week or so. There are challenges in dealing with the mass transit concept along population centres. What we have here is an arterial route that is dedicated to what I call quasi-mass transit hardware, which is maxi-taxis and buses.

“It seems to me that ultimately we will have to scale that up to a different quantum level. That is why the NHS has been mandated to fast track the total feasibility study of a monorail/light rail system along the two major corridors — East/West and North/South,” he stated. The Minister said while the overall NHS will take 18 months to complete, the monorail component has been taken out for fast-tracking. “Hopefully we should get that information within six to eight months after the commissioning of the study and the government plans to take an investment decision on the light monorail system by June 2005,” Khan said. The Minister recalled that discussions between an Indian company and the government, led to the idea of a light monorail system being established in TT. He explained that this was why government decided to factor this element into the NHS.