Answer in monorail?

Any introduction by government of a monorail service once the service’s reliability is demonstrated will encourage fare-paying commuters to shift to the multi-passenger system and be a crucial factor in reducing stressful traffic congestion both on the east-west corridor and the Uriah Butler and Solomon Hochoy highways, the joint connecting link between San Fernando and North Trinidad.

A feasibility study is being undertaken and the areas the monorail service is expected to embrace, once it is fully operational, represent the most highly trafficked in Trinidad — Arima to Port-of-Spain, Port-of-Spain to Diego Martin and Port-of-Spain to San Fernando. Meanwhile, the Port-of-Spain to San Fernando end of the monorail system will serve the several areas of Caroni along and off the line as well as Victoria and save where this may be deemed as being not feasible will be operated on the old rail bed. Clearly, what the planners must have had in mind with respect to the Port-of-Spain to San Fernando section of the monorail service would have been the expansion of the Point Lisas Industrial Estate and the facilitating of home to plant and plant to home movement of the scores of persons who at present work there along with the anticipated expanded work force. Then too construction of new industrial plants over the next several decades and expansion of existing ones will mean a temporary influx of thousands of workers contracted for the duration of the project.

The monorail service will have the welcomed domino effect of easing traffic congestion on the Southern Main Road and access roads to the north-south highways as well as to the Churchill Roosevelt highway, the eastern main road and the Western Main Road. This will result in easier passage of trucks and other heavy duty vehicles on the highways and the main roads which today add to the congestion. The reduction in travel time of these vehicles as well as the consequent easier access of agricultural produce to the respective markets will lead to a lowering of transport costs and increase in the profits of farmers and the business people and a hope for reduction in the cost of living. In addition, the Public Transport Service Corporation should be able to launch with effect a public relations campaign targetting private car owners particularly in the east-west corridor urging them to leave their cars at home and travel by monorail.

Another plus with the full introduction of a reliable and efficient monorail service will be the diminishing need for foreign second hand cars along with a decrease in the level of air pollution resulting today both from an excessive number of vehicles on the road and the traffic jam caused by them. There is clearly no available land space for any meaningful widening of the main arteries through the areas which the monorail is intended to serve. The several governments which have been in power since the old rail service was abandoned in 1968 whether People’s National Movement (PNM), National Alliance for Reconstruction or United National Congress had all failed until today’s PNM administration to respond to the traffic demand created by the country’s industrial, economic and student population growth. If in 1874 the rationale for the introduction of the then Trinidad Government Railways had been the servicing of the oil and sugar industries through the transport of plant and machinery as well as sugar cane and sugar with passenger traffic a secondary consideration today the prime concern of the monorail planners is the efficient and reliable lifting of industrial, business and office workers as well as the country’s school children.