The time is now for a comprehensive and broad transportation plan

The recently established committee in Jamaica's public transport sector,  remain unclear. The committee's members have not been disclosed except for Mikael Phillips, the shadow minister. While emphasising inclusivity, Minister Vaz invited Phillips to join the committee to address issues in the sector. The committee's mandate and purpose are yet to be fully known, but this uncertainty presents an opportunity for a comprehensive and broad transportation plan. The committee should address various aspects, including public and private transportation policies, road network management, energy use, national security's impact, and transportation's role in the economy. This approach could lead to a transformative transportation operating plan for Jamaica.

Transportation mandate

21 Aug 2023

BUT FOR the vague notion that it is to deal with problems in the public transport system, it remains unclear what are the terms of reference of the committee recently established for the sector and who owns the group – the transport minister, Daryl Vaz, or the island’s transport operators.

Nor has it been disclosed who are the committee’s members, but perhaps for one – the shadow minister, Mikael Phillips, whose membership is a good thing. Maybe the committee will work without the tug of partisan politics.

Mr Vaz was named the transport minister in May’s re-assignment of Cabinet portfolios by Prime Minister Andrew Holness. A month ago he presided over a gathering of players in the unruly public transport sector, ostensibly to outline his short-term priorities and to hear their concerns. In the aftermath of those talks, the government’s Jamaica Information Service reported that the transport operators had established the committee to, according to the agency, “represent the operators’ interests ... in tackling issues affecting the sector”.

Notwithstanding Mr Vaz’s emphasis on inclusivity in dealing with public transportation issues, it is nonetheless notable that it was he, rather than the transport operators, who invited Mr Phillips to be a member of the committee.

“He asked me and I accepted,” Mr Phillips told the Jamaica Observer of the minister’s invitation. “But he didn’t specify that it was going to deal with fares or anything like that. What he said to me is that he did not want to have to deal with the 60-plus different associations, and he wanted a smaller steering committee, and if I was willing to sit on it. I said yes.”

MANDATE

If Mr Phillips now knows what the mandate is, the public does not. There is, though, something potentially redemptive in this muddled opacity. It provides an opportunity for Mr Vaz to refine his ideas and to establish a committee to deal not only with the short-term matters, but craft a broad, multisectoral transportation plan covering everything, from where and how roads are built, to the private ownership and use of vehicles.

In this regard, a useful bit of information to which the committee – whoever its members are – should pay attention is a recent report by this newspaper on motor vehicle imports, culled from the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s Economic and Social Survey

Jamaica.

In 2022, the Trade Board issued licences for the importation of 50,786 motor vehicles, valued at US$531 million, or approximately J$82 billion. That was over 10,300, or approximately 26 per cent more, than the previous year. In US dollar terms, last year’s bill was six per cent higher than in 2021.

But it is not only the foreign exchange outflow to import the vehicles that is to be considered. Billions more are spent on spare parts to keep them on the road. Then there is the fuel to power them.

Last year, of the 20.16 million barrels of petroleum consumed in Jamaica – imported at a cost of nearly US$2.6 billion – a third, or over 6.75 million barrels, were used in rail and road transportation. Private vehicles consumed a big chunk of that.

EXPENSIVE BUSINESS

Expressed differently, replenishing and maintaining the over half a million vehicles on Jamaica’s roads is an expensive business. Most of the cash goes abroad.

The question for Mr Vaz’s committee, therefore, is whether Jamaica can manage its transport system better and more efficiently.

The temptation, of course, is to look at transportation only through the prism of the largely shambolic public system – of the route taxis whose drivers race mindlessly to the next fare, with seemingly careless regard for the road code and even less for the safety of passengers. Their recklessness is driven in part by the uneconomic fares they are forced to charge, while the Government’s Jamaica Urban Transit Company, which operates primarily in the capital and its outskirts, is subsidised to the tune of more than J$11 billion.

Even as it deals with the immediate issue fares and discipline, Mr Vaz’s – or is it the operators’– committee should, as we suggested previously, be mandated to take a broader look at transportation, taking into the account the following:

• Policies for the structure/ownership of the public transportation system;

• The regulation and use of private vehicles;

• The design, management and maintenance of the island’s road network;

• The relationship between public transportation and energy use and, therefore, energy policy;

• The impact of national security on public transportation; and

• How transportation (public and private) interface with, and influence, national economic outcomes.

Out of this should come an operating plan for transportation in Jamaica, to be fully implemented over the medium to long term, turning on its head existing notions of transportation. In that time, private vehicle ownership might even become an aberration. No one might feel a need for them.

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