AOPT: Lack of consultation, planning cause of some PSV issues

Chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) Roy Raphael has blamed a lack of consultation and proper planning for a large number of Public Service Vehicle (PSV) operators cutting routes short.
He sought to offer this explanation in response to mounting criticism from citizens and lawmakers over the last few weeks that operators have not been travelling their full routes, forcing some commuters to walk further to reach their final destinations.
One community that has been heavily impacted by this practice is Fairy Valley, Christ Church, where one resident who spoke to Barbados TODAY on condition of anonymity said most of the PSVs licensed to service the area often leave passengers stranded and forced to make the 10-minute walk into the community, particularly during the evening and night hours.
“That is a very long walk, it’s a very dangerous road [and] I’ve actually had a few near misses with cars. The van drivers refuse to go into Fairy Valley even though it is clearly on the side of the van that it’s part of the route,” the concerned commuter said.
“There are two, maybe three vans that would go [but] you don’t see them often. I would have made several complaints to the Transport Authority and nothing has changed. My daughter sometimes comes in at eight and nine o’clock at night, and the vans refuse to drive in. They prefer to put her at Fair Deals…. I either have to get someone to pick her up or I would walk and meet her and we would walk back in together.”
When contacted about the situation, Raphael acknowledged that it was unacceptable but said it stemmed from the fact that many routes cover some of the same areas, resulting in drivers vying for the same passengers.
This, he said, contributed to the hustle culture seen among PSV operators.
“I’m not making any excuses. It’s part of the route and we encourage our stakeholders to go to Fairy Valley but obviously, you are talking about routes that you have to compete with. You are talking about Sam Lord’s Castle, all the 3D [Airport, Parish Land, Fairy Valley] vehicles. You are competing with them…. So if a fella goes on a route with a 3D vehicle and he has to go into Fairy Valley, I doubt very much that he would want to do so,” the AOPT chairman told Barbados TODAY.
“Yet, you have another route, the 1S, who would like to capitalise on that extra number of persons going into Fairy Valley because Fairy Valley is not far from Chancery Lane.”
Raphael said the lack of consultation when additional licences were granted was mainly to blame for the level of chaos often seen, as operators actively compete with each other on some routes while other routes are hardly serviced.
“This would boil down to a lack of consultation; the Prime Minister [Mia Mottley] would have alluded to that too. The fact remains that people went ahead at the board level and made decisions without consultation with the people that are out there, such as the association and its members,” he said, noting that there are now over 800 PSVs on the roads.
“That is why we always call for a special committee outside of the Transport Authority to sit down and look at the day-to-day operations of the Transport Board and the public service operators. Reason being, often we don’t know what the Transport Board is doing and they don’t know what we are doing. If the Transport Board has issues at night where people cannot get home, we would be able to fill the void,” Raphael added.
(SB)