Dr Winford James
trinicenter.com

Taking me for a ride, Pt II

Aug 24, 2003,
by Dr Winford James


It's the long holiday season again and, yet again, the mess on the airbridge has deepened. People with bookings turn up at the appointed times, only to find, often in the absence of public announcements, that their flights have been delayed by as much as four hours. Commuters cannot get bookings a week in advance. Commuters who hope to get a seat on standby have to either spend as much as the whole day waiting or go back home to return another day. It's been happening year after year, government after government, political promise after political promise, and stable relief is still to come.

This year, it is happening in a context where the central government, with the facile support of the THA, wants to impose a $100 penalty for missed booked flights. They tried to impose the penalty in January but had to back away in the face of heavy resistance from the harrowed commuting Tobagonian public. I wrote a column on the matter on January 19, 2003, and the essence of what I wrote still holds true.

Let me recapitulate.

The return airfare of $300 was reduced to $200 in delivery of a PNM election promise. This much-needed and much-appreciated action was taken in the context of a poor ferry service, falling levels of (international) tourist arrivals, and long-suffering commuters, especially those resident in Tobago. But the PNM wanted to attach to it the constraint of a $100 penalty for missed flights that had been booked at least a week earlier. This was tantamount to a retention of the $300 fare, given the nature of travel on the airbridge.

As they should in a twin-island state such as ours with chronic economic dependence of Tobago on Trinidad, they were subsidising the fare by $100. But, deceptively, they were taking back the subsidy in the form of a missed booking penalty. Commuters would have to book their tickets seven days in advance, but if they failed to travel in accordance with their booking and wanted to travel at a different time, they would forfeit the subsidy. If they wanted to qualify for the subsidy again, they had to book again for travel at least seven days later. The only way they could enjoy the subsidised fare was to travel at the time booked seven days in advance.

The arrangement is clearly ridiculous, given the nature of travel on the bridge. The commuter cannot always get a booking seven days in advance, especially in this holiday season when the traffic considerably (and overwhelmingly?) picks up. The nature of Tobagonian dependence on Trinidad is such that travel cannot be systematised in terms of fixed seven-day periods; airbridge travel is like ground travel - done on the spur of the moment, often unpredictably, and at short notice.

As I wrote in that earlier column:
'(T)he airbridge is a thouroughfare where obtaining a seat is routinely a matter of either booking so that you will have a guarantee or simply turning up at the airport and getting one on as a stand-by commuter. It is almost like taking a taxi into Port of Spain from some distant district like Toco or Penal. Almost. The routineness of travel has meant that there is no real need, apart from the need for a guarantee of travel, for booking in advance, much less seven days in advance. So if we are now required to book seven days in advance to enjoy the subsidy, it must be that the PNM are deliberately going against their knowledge of the state of affairs and imposing an unreasonable constraint on our lives.'

In an even earlier column, which appeared on October 27, 2000, I made an argument for subsidization, which still holds good. I said in part:
'Trinidad and Tobago is one nation connected by air and sea. There is heavy administrative and economic dependence by Tobago on Trinidad and thousands of Tobago-based citizens are obliged to travel to Trinidad for a variety of basic and not-so-basic reasons. (...) In a situation where two islands form one state and one is heavily dependent on the other, it just won't do for the citizens in the dependent island to have to pay the economic airfare or sea fare. There must be subsidisation. (...) Inter-island transport companies must be able to charge economic fares, but if those fares are onerous on citizens, then the government must subsidise [them], and involvement of the government of Tobago would make things go smoother. There is no other reasonable solution if we want to protect the unity of the state.'

I understand the government, including the THA, still wants to increase the fare (through the ridiculous penalty). They must be vigorously resisted - for reasons given above as well as the following: BWIA and Tobago Express often have delays that are no fault of the commuter and they suffer no penalty that I know of.

But penalty or no penalty, we have got to fix the mess on the airbridge that worsens every holiday season. Why don't we try the following combination: 1) a regular set of flights daily, increased over long and festive weekends and as per call-in commuter demands, 2) an air taxi service which fills up on demand, and 3) a larger fleet of planes?

Part I


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