Time to tax

The way a problem is defined determines its solution possibilities. Is there a unique solution, or are there a number of solutions? What is distinct between what the problem is and what it is not? What is the cause of the problem? What are the assumptions made in arriving at the likely cause(s) of the problem? Can you buy time in solving the problem, that is, is there an interim solution? Or, can you live with the problem, and adapt yourself to its consequences? Or, are you able to actually correct the problem?

According to Richard Worrall and Gary Euler at a course on project management for the transportation professional sponsored by the Institute of Transportation Engineers in 2000, one of the three commonest culprits responsible for project failure is ill-defined needs. The other two are organisational factors and poor planning and control.

The Transport Ministry is introducing rapid rail transit as the solution to the problem of traffic congestion. So we have a solution, but what is really the problem? I daresay that traffic congestion is not the problem, but is a symptom of the problem of our transportation system. When land use activities continue to be developed in the absence of transportation planning, the result is traffic management problems. Hence, it is simplistic to perceive the solution as congestion alleviation.

It is no longer desirable to drive a vehicle, nor is it comfortable to be a passenger, due to the frustration of travelling at snail’s pace on almost every road, and the inability to predict the duration of any journey, at any time of the day. It is also impossible to get a legal on-street park during the daytime in any urban centre and extremely difficult even for an illegal one. Privately operated off-street parking lots are often completely filled particularly during pre-lunch periods. In other words, there is not nearly enough parking to meet the mushrooming demand. So sidewalks, open spaces, and lately, the Queen’s Park Savannah are increasingly being used for the aesthetically unappealing intrusion by the parked car.

Meanwhile, public transport continues to be unmanaged and unscheduled, and confined to only the two main corridors, while remaining totally unreliable elsewhere. We are bordering on chaos in vehicle mobility and accessibility. While we may say that congestion is a problem, it has not led us to do anything differently. Instead, there is the expectation that the Transport Minister will solve congestion, with each minister continuing to emphasise widening highways, building interchanges, and more recently, building rapid rail transit. And Government policy continues to flood the roadways with cheap cars while increasing fuel subsidy.

In effect, we have gone beyond the need for traffic management. As stated in an earlier article, traffic management concentrates on measures to alleviate the symptoms of transportation problems and not root causes.

Instead, we need to examine Transport Demand Management (TDM) which is about providing travellers with choices of mode, location, route, and time. TDM includes, in no order of priority:

(a) High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane: A lane reserved for vehicles carrying a minimum number of persons, usually two or more. If space in the lane is available, others can pay a fee to use the lane. Fees are set so that traffic flows reliably. More about this in a subsequent article.

(b) Well-organised transit system that delivers high quality passenger transport services in a safe, cost-effective and environmentally sound manner.

(c) Parking management to control, regulate, or restrict on-street parking, off-street parking, fringe and corridor parking, pricing, enforcement and adjudication, and marketing.

(d) Land use growth management to regulate the location, spatial pattern, population density, quality and rate of growth of development.

(e) Alternative work hours, including staggered hours, flexi-time, and compressed workweek.

(f) Ride-sharing can involve carpooling, vanpooling, and buspooling. Carpooling involves the use of an employee’s private vehicle to carry one or more fellow employees to work, either using one car and sharing expenses, or rotating vehicle use so that no money changes hands.

Vanpooling generally involves the use of an eight-to12-seater van, and the fixed and operating at least partially paid by the riders through monthly fares. There are three types of vanpool programmes: company-sponsored, third-party and owner-operated. Buspools are usually initiated by employers, although residential-based buspools may also be formed under the auspices of transit agencies.

(g) Road Congestion Pricing. By charging motorists a price that represents the cost they create by using a particular road, individual drivers will react to this cost by :

(i) Accepting it;

(ii) Adopting another mode of transportation;

(iii) Going another route; or

(iv) Foregoing the trip.

If roads were priced like any other scarce commodity, better use would be made of existing space and the revenues raised could be used to improve public transport. The mere fact of making motorists pay their way would free capacity to such an extent that road transit travel would become easier and faster, and subsidies could be reduced.

(h) Ferry transport on the Gulf of Paria to contact important coastal urban centres.

(i) Advanced traffic management, including real-time traffic adaptive signal control system, monitoring cameras, incident detection equipment, emergency and transit pre-emption equipment, and automatic vehicle locator technology.

In later articles, I will attempt to apply the above strategies to address our situation.

e-mail: lfsystems@carib-link.net