Editorial | A new transport policy

Fairness and equity obviously support Daryl Vaz’s efforts to expand the operations of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) beyond the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR). And Mr Vaz could only be responding to commuter demand and related economic forces in formally endorsing the expansion of the route taxi system to new areas of the capital.

However, like his opposition shadow, Mikael Phillips, Mr Vaz has failed to offer a coherent, integrated policy for public transportation, the net effect of which is likely to be spread of the inefficiency, ramshackle and chaos that the majority of Jamaicans experience when they commute.

Last week, Mr Vaz, the transport minister, disclosed that the JUTC, the state-owned bus company, had opened routes to relatively new housing schemes in the parish of St Catherine, just west of the Kingston/St Andrew municipal area. Others were planned for the south-central parishes of Clarendon and Manchester, as well as in the north-western parishes of St James and Hanover. On its face, therefore, JUTC is on its way to becoming a truly national bus service.

Further, 11 routes in Kingston/St Andrew are being converted from hackney cab to route taxi service.

“These expansions are important to meeting the growing demand for public transportation and improving connectivity across the island,” Minister Vaz said at a press conference.

HAIR-RAISING

The agreed fact of Jamaica’s public transportation system – especially route taxis, which move the majority of commuters – is that it is a mostly hair-raising experience for those who use it.

On the usually gridlocked streets of the island’s towns and cities, it’s the norm for overcrowded taxis and private buses – many of them illegal – to break traffic laws and their operating regulations. They race against each other to collect passengers, often drive on the wrong side of the road, ignore traffic signals, and divert from established routes, seeking shortcuts ahead of traffic.

Commuters tolerate these dangers, and even pay higher fares, for the greater speed with which route taxis usually get them to their destinations.

When it was established nearly three decades ago, the JUTC was expected to be a well-organised replacement for an equally chaotic, shambolic and decentralised bus service operated by myriad private owners. JUTC appeared to work well for a time. But it couldn’t meet demand, allowing for the infiltration, and subsequent formalisation, of the route taxis and minibus services.

Moreover, the JUTC is an expensive venture for taxpayers. Not counting the cost of capital equipment, the company has over the last two fiscal years lost approximately J$22 billion. It will add another J$18 billion to that in the 2025-26 fiscal year, which begins in April. The losses over the three fiscal years (including 2025-26) will be partially cushioned by nearly J$30 billion in operating subsidies.

By the end of the coming financial year, the company will have an accumulated deficit of J$18.4 billion and more than J$14 billion in liabilities over assets. In other words, it operates on the goodwill of the Government.

That may very well be a price taxpayers are willing to pay for a transportation entity they believe to be vital to the national economy. Except that, until recently, the JUTC operated in a portion of the country where about a quarter of the population lives.

That gives logic to Mr Vaz’s move to take the company out of the KMTR, facilitated by an expansion of its fleet that will allow it to deploy 293 buses daily, 44 per cent more than in the current year. It is also projected to move 47 per cent more passengers in 2025-26, reaching 27.84 million rides. This expansion in service will, after J$11 billion in direct government subsidies, push the company’s ‘net’ loss in 2025-26 to J$6.97 billion.

QUESTIONABLE SUSTAINABILITY

These are big numbers of questionable sustainability, especially in the absence of a deep analysis of their contribution to the economy or of how Jamaica might more efficiently organise its public transportation system, particularly in relation to how Jamaicans live, work and recreate; what a public transport system should look like; and what it should deliver.

Mr Vaz and Mr Phillips have concentrated primarily on short-term political deliveries – assuaging various constituencies, without addressing transportation in the context of national development. Which is why this newspaper has several times urged Messrs Vaz and Phillips to develop transportation policies that focus not only on responses to immediate problems, but also on planning for medium- and long-term prospects.

In that sense, a transportation policy cannot stand on its own. It must be multisectoral – an integrated model of how policymakers perceive the island’s communities should look and feel and be lived in, and, by extension, how citizens should commute.

It must, therefore, address the question of whether government policy should discourage private motor vehicle ownership in favour of public transportation. This means delving into gridlock on the roads that costs hundreds of millions of man hours annually. Jamaicans annually spend over US$500 million a year on vehicle import; US$200 million used to buy spare parts; and US$300 million on fuel for ground transport.

There is, too, the matter of lagging urban renewal while greenfield housing developments, distant from important social services, and utilising fertile land, abound.