By Shamar Blunt
Chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) Roy Raphael has pointed to a lack of coordination between event promoters and transportation providers during the just-ended Crop Over season as a low point for the sector during the 2022 festival.
Reporting that the first Crop Over Festival in two years was a mixed bag for the sector, he acknowledged that its return resulted in a noticeable increase in business for PSV and taxi operators, due to a large number of fetes and other events.
However, Raphael said, things could have run much more smoothly if event organisers had communicated better with the transportation community.
“This year a lot of the operators complained to me that the police were not allowing them to set down and pick up passengers [near events] although they were taxi operators. It’s something that we started discussions with the NCF [National Cultural Foundation] about, in terms of its sites, but they did not put in Kadooment, but the challenge came through the Kadooment.
“We were not allowed to park [at] the venue, so it meant that we had to spend more time driving around to avoid being reported by the police. It’s something I believe that the NCF, not only for Kadooment and Crop Over, but events happening at the National Stadium, Kensington Oval [etc]; it’s something I believe organisers need to speak to us about.
“We should have a designated area set down for public service vehicles to put off persons. Even Soca on The Hill [on Tuesday], it was basically confusion . . . . A lot of the operators could not get close to the venue because of the amount of traffic there. So I believe discussions will have to continue with the association and its members so that everyone would feel very much a part of the celebrations,” Raphael said.
The AOPT chairman also reported that the recent rollout of the new cashless system for operators had a slow takeup by passengers during the Crop Over season, as Barbadians were wary of using digital payments, despite the enhanced security features.
“It has started with a very slow start. Digital payments for Barbadians is a very slow thing, it’s something that we are really not accustomed to . . . so the start for the taxis has been very slow,” he said.
“We will do some advertising to encourage people, and we will be also giving away some prizes to encourage persons to utilise the service, but obviously it’s a pilot project we are working on. We are hoping by the end of this month that we should have an assessment of the results from the pilot project to see where exactly we go from there,” Raphael added.
