Financial incentives not enough to get minibuses back on the road at night

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves announced incentives to operators of public service vehicles who are willing to provide a late night service to Vincentian commuters.

The announcement is timely, there being an urgent need for a more reliable public transportation system, particularly after 8 pm and on routes to the interior of St Vincent, off the main public road.

Because of the limited availability of public transportation, employment in the hospitality sector and other businesses / services that operate outside of daylight hours has been limited to persons to live close to the work place or who can make their own transportation arrangements. Outside of this, some businesses have been forced to hire minibuses to take their workers home at night in order to ensure that critical posts are filled.

But the financial assistance that has been offered, which we are sure is welcomed, may not be enough to entice operators to remain on the road late at night. They say it is too risky for them to do so. They have formed this opinion since late 2012, when there was a spate of robberies committed against minibuses by masked gunmen, resulting in most operators refusing to remain on the road after dark.

Any plan therefore to lure operators back on to the road at night will have to fulsomely address the security issue in order to make the minibuses less of a target for robbers. One way to do that is to make the minibus operation a cash-free environment.

Thankfully, today, compared with 2012, we have more options available to make a cash-free service feasible, including DCash, the digital version of the EC dollar which was introduced by the East Caribbean Central Bank, but which to date has not seen much uptake among consumers. The use of bus passes that can be swiped on entering the bus is another option that will eliminate the need for cash.

More frequent police patrols and other surveillance of the bus routes during the late night hours will be essential if commuters and operators are to feel safe. All of this surveillance need not be in person, and in this regard, greater use could be made of the e-bus and video surveillance systems, which were introduced with the assistance of the Taiwanese in July 2020.

The establishment of a central agency to co-ordinate routes and sell bus tickets or passes is also important to the efficiency of an improved public transportation system.

When the Prime Minister announced the availability of the incentive, he also said operators would be required to attend classes on business management, defensive driving, customer service, and other pertinent subject areas in order to be properly accredited. This is a move that we wholeheartedly support. No minibus operator or conductor should be allowed on the road, during the day, or at night, without receiving accreditation from a central agency.

But the introduction of this late night service and the attendant safeguards should be just one aspect of an overhaul of the entire public transportation system in order to make it safer, more comfortable, more efficient and run according to a published schedule to better serve the needs of a modern society.