WE ARE HAPPY to hear Minister of Transport and Works Michael Lashley concede that “it is not good enough” to have the congestion in bus terminals caused by commuters waiting for transportation to make it home after a long day.
We are equally pleased to hear of his plan to provide an ease to this nagging problem for those who are inconvenienced daily by a transportation system that is fraught with problems far too often.
Sadly, it seems the story is the same every school term of every school year. Baffling as it is, officials appear to wait until it is days shy of the reopening of school to try to address transportation problems that cripple the easy movement of commuters to and from their destinations.
Take the last few weeks, for example. This newspaper reported almost weekly the long waits in the bus terminals on almost every route. Commuters were vocal about their frustrations and complained bitterly as they stood tired and helpless in the terminals.
Now, this week, as if it is a revelation, Mr Lashley has announced that with schools set to reopen next week, they would be resurrecting and giving life to old, broken down buses that have been sitting at the Mangrove, St Philip facility. It seems that even though commuters’ complaints were widely ventilated in the media weeks before, it is only now that officials seem willing to press into action given the start of school on Tuesday.
Then, as if a light bulb seemingly went off, the minister said he would also be pushing to have private sector buses operating from the Transport Board terminals at peak times to reduce the long wait.
While we welcome these plans to deal with the increasing transportation problems, it is worrying that these solutions are only coming in spurts as a reactive, short-term measure to long-term issues that are publicly known. Solutions to the country’s public transportation system have been slow in coming, and simply are band-aid fixes to a chronic issue.
Instead, Mr Minister, what may be more effective is if you sit down with all the major stakeholders in this sector and map out an effective plan of attack. We hear the lofty proposals to put all these buses back on the road, but how operational will they be given all the niggling issues they have?
So desperate is this situation it seems, that a bus that has been sitting in the graveyard for 16 years is now being recommissioned. We frown on the fact that with so many Barbadians relying on public transportation every day to move around, not enough is done to ensure a smoother ride for this sector.
While we acknowledge there may be no easy fix to these transportation woes, it is about time that the Government shifts into high gear to find a long-term solution to deal with these issues once and for all.