An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

This week’s maxi-taxi strike has cre­at­ed a fi­nan­cial wind­fall for pri­vate-hire (PH) dri­vers and ride-hail­ing com­pa­nies, even as busi­ness­es faced staffing chal­lenges, com­muters paid sub­stan­tial­ly more to reach their work­places, and con­cerns mount­ed over the wider eco­nom­ic fall­out from the trans­porta­tion dis­rup­tion.

With thou­sands of com­muters left search­ing for al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion on Mon­day and Tues­day, PH dri­vers op­er­at­ing along ma­jor routes re­port­ed some of their high­est dai­ly earn­ings in months. For many work­ers, pay­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er fares be­came the on­ly op­tion to avoid miss­ing work.

PH dri­ver Michael James, who op­er­ates be­tween Port-of-Spain and Ari­ma, said de­mand on Mon­day be­gan build­ing be­fore dawn and re­mained strong through­out the day.

“Peo­ple were call­ing from as ear­ly as 4.30 in the morn­ing. Nor­mal­ly, I would make maybe $500 or $600 for a whole day. On Mon­day, I made over $1,200, and Tues­day was just about the same. Every­body need­ed to get to work, and they were will­ing to pay be­cause they had no choice,” he said.

James charged com­muters $40 per per­son for the trip be­tween Port of Spain and Ari­ma. With four pas­sen­gers in his ve­hi­cle, each trip gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $160. By com­plet­ing sev­en to eight ful­ly loaded trips dur­ing the day, he earned be­tween $1,120 and $1,280 dai­ly.
An­oth­er dri­ver, Kevin Lewis, de­scribed the two days as some of the busiest he had ex­pe­ri­enced since en­ter­ing the trans­porta­tion busi­ness.
“You drop off a load in Ari­ma, and be­fore you could even stop for a dou­bles, some­body is call­ing for a ride back to Port of Spain. On Mon­day, I made around $1,250, and Tues­day was close to that. It was non-stop work,” he said.

A third PH dri­ver, Dar­ren Mo­hammed, who trans­port­ed com­muters trav­el­ling east to San­gre Grande, re­port­ed equal­ly strong de­mand.
“I was charg­ing $50 from Port of Spain to San­gre Grande, and peo­ple were still call­ing. I made more than $1,200 each day. I can’t re­mem­ber the last time I had two days like that,” he said.

Mo­hammed ex­plained that a full ve­hi­cle gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200 per trip. By com­plet­ing about six ful­ly oc­cu­pied runs dai­ly be­tween Port of Spain and San­gre Grande, his earn­ings reached rough­ly $1,200 a day.

The high­er fares re­flect­ed both the short­age of avail­able trans­porta­tion and the ur­gency of com­muters at­tempt­ing to main­tain their nor­mal rou­tines amid the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

While many work­ers turned to rel­a­tives, friends, and co-work­ers for as­sis­tance, oth­ers re­lied on pri­vate trans­porta­tion providers de­spite the added ex­pense.

De­mand spike

Ride-hail­ing plat­forms al­so ex­pe­ri­enced a dra­mat­ic in­crease in ac­tiv­i­ty as com­muters sought al­ter­na­tives to maxi taxis.
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor of all­Ri­Di Leisel Dou­glas-Wick­ham said the lo­cal plat­form record­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in ride re­quests and com­plet­ed trips through­out the strike pe­ri­od.

“All­Ri­Di saw a marked in­crease in ride re­quests and, by ex­ten­sion, ride ful­fil­ment. We reg­is­tered about a 25 per cent in­crease from ear­ly morn­ing, and that ex­tend­ed and fur­ther in­creased in­to the evening pe­ri­od. We al­so record­ed a rise in our sched­uled rides fea­ture, around 30 per cent.”

The sched­uled ride fea­ture al­lows com­muters to pre-book trans­porta­tion be­fore de­par­ture and re­ceive con­fir­ma­tion from a dri­ver, help­ing to re­duce un­cer­tain­ty dur­ing pe­ri­ods of trans­porta­tion dis­rup­tion.

Dou­glas-Wick­ham ex­plained that the com­pa­ny moved quick­ly to re­spond to pub­lic de­mand by of­fer­ing dis­count­ed rides.

“In di­rect re­sponse to pub­lic and rid­er feed­back, all­Ri­Di im­ple­ment­ed a 10 per cent dis­count on rides. Rid­ers re­deemed their dis­count through the use of our dis­count code TENOFF.”

The com­pa­ny al­so ac­ti­vat­ed in­cen­tives for dri­vers in an ef­fort to in­crease ve­hi­cle avail­abil­i­ty dur­ing the peak de­mand pe­ri­ods.

Dou­glas-Wick­ham not­ed that all­Ri­Di’s ac­tive dri­ver net­work en­abled the com­pa­ny to main­tain strong ser­vice lev­els de­spite the sud­den surge in ride re­quests.

“Many of our dri­vers came on­line as the de­mand grew. Nat­u­ral­ly, there were peak de­mand times and our sys­tems worked ad­mirably, con­nect­ing rid­ers to the clos­est dri­vers to them, mak­ing for an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive ser­vice.”

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed av­er­age fares of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $112 from Port of Spain to Ari­ma, $41 from Port of Spain to San Juan, $53 from Port of Spain to Curepe and $194 from Port of Spain to San­gre Grande.

Dou­glas-Wick­ham added that all­Ri­Di con­tin­ues to ex­plore op­tions aimed at re­duc­ing trans­porta­tion costs for users, in­clud­ing the pos­si­ble in­tro­duc­tion of a shared-ride mod­el that would al­low mul­ti­ple pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling in the same di­rec­tion to split trans­porta­tion costs.

She ex­plained that the com­pa­ny has con­tin­ued ex­pand­ing since launch­ing in Jan­u­ary 2020, just be­fore the out­nreak of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. It re­mains fo­cused on pro­vid­ing af­ford­able and re­li­able trans­porta­tion so­lu­tions.

TT Rideshare Ltd, op­er­a­tors of the TTRS plat­form, al­so re­port­ed in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the strike. Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Dwight House­nd es­ti­mat­ed that de­mand on the plat­form rose by more than 20 per cent as com­muters searched for trans­porta­tion op­tions.

De­spite the in­crease, House­nd stressed that ride-shar­ing com­pa­nies could not re­place the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

“There are over 30,000 dri­vers in the na­tion­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem. We are nowhere near even 10 per cent of that mar­ket. We can’t fill that need as an or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

He point­ed out that ride-shar­ing ser­vices re­main a rel­a­tive­ly small com­po­nent of the coun­try’s over­all trans­porta­tion net­work and was nev­er de­signed to sub­sti­tute for large-scale pub­lic trans­porta­tion ser­vices.

House­nd said the com­pa­ny’s pri­ma­ry fo­cus dur­ing the strike was as­sist­ing com­muters who had lim­it­ed trans­porta­tion op­tions while try­ing to min­imise ad­di­tion­al hard­ship. He al­so raised ques­tions about the long-term out­come of the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and the need for mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment among all stake­hold­ers in­volved in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor.

The TTRS chair­man ar­gued that while trans­porta­tion op­er­a­tors have le­git­i­mate con­cerns, dis­cus­sions should fo­cus on iden­ti­fy­ing prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions that pre­vent sim­i­lar dis­rup­tions from re­cur­ring in the fu­ture.

Lim­it­ed rental gains

Al­though trans­porta­tion de­mand surged across the coun­try, ve­hi­cle rental com­pa­nies re­port­ed mixed ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the strike.

Sev­er­al rental agen­cies con­tact­ed by the Busi­ness Guardian in­di­cat­ed that they did not ex­pe­ri­ence any sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in in­di­vid­ual ve­hi­cle rentals de­spite the wide­spread dis­rup­tion.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies ex­plained that most com­muters ap­peared to favour PH ser­vices, ride-hail­ing ap­pli­ca­tions, and car­pool­ing arrange­ments rather than rent­ing ve­hi­cles for short pe­ri­ods.

Some op­er­a­tors sug­gest­ed that the rel­a­tive­ly short du­ra­tion of the strike may have in­flu­enced con­sumer be­hav­iour, with many peo­ple choos­ing tem­po­rary trans­porta­tion al­ter­na­tives in­stead of en­ter­ing rental agree­ments.

While pri­vate rentals re­mained large­ly un­changed, some com­pa­nies re­port­ed stronger de­mand from cor­po­rate clients.

One rental com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive said sev­er­al large busi­ness­es hired bus­es and shut­tle ser­vices to trans­port work­ers to and from of­fices dur­ing the strike pe­ri­od. An­oth­er op­er­a­tor dis­closed that a num­ber of com­pa­nies sought trans­porta­tion pack­ages specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to en­sure staff at­ten­dance through­out the dis­rup­tion.

The cor­po­rate trans­porta­tion arrange­ments helped some rental com­pa­nies off­set weak­er de­mand from in­di­vid­ual cus­tomers.

Busi­ness own­ers across sev­er­al sec­tors have ex­pressed con­cerns about em­ploy­ee at­ten­dance and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the strike, par­tic­u­lar­ly for work­ers who re­ly heav­i­ly on maxi taxi ser­vices.

Some com­pa­nies ad­just­ed work sched­ules, fa­cil­i­tat­ed car­pool­ing among em­ploy­ees or made al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion arrange­ments to min­imise dis­rup­tions to op­er­a­tions.

Wider con­cerns

Be­yond the trans­porta­tion sec­tor, econ­o­mists and busi­ness lead­ers have warned that the strike car­ries broad­er im­pli­ca­tions for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

For­mer trans­port min­is­ter and for­mer chair­man of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion Dr De­vant Ma­haraj, de­scribed re­li­able trans­porta­tion as an es­sen­tial pil­lar of eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in small is­land de­vel­op­ing states such as T&T.

Ma­haraj, whose doc­tor­ate is in mar­ket­ing, ar­gued that dis­rup­tions to work­force mo­bil­i­ty can have im­me­di­ate con­se­quences for busi­ness­es, re­tail­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and ser­vice providers.
He not­ed that trans­port in­ter­rup­tions af­fect em­ploy­ee at­ten­dance, con­sumer spend­ing pat­terns, sup­ply chains, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els across mul­ti­ple sec­tors of the econ­o­my.
The for­mer min­is­ter point­ed to re­ports of re­duced staffing lev­els at some busi­ness­es, low­er foot traf­fic in com­mer­cial dis­tricts, and chal­lenges faced by par­ents at­tempt­ing to bal­ance work com­mit­ments with trans­porta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties af­fect­ing school-aged chil­dren.

Ma­haraj al­so warned that re­cur­ring trans­porta­tion dis­rup­tions could un­der­mine in­vestor con­fi­dence and ham­per ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my at a time when eco­nom­ic growth re­mains mod­est.

The strike has high­light­ed the ex­tent to which thou­sands of work­ers de­pend on the maxi taxi net­work for dai­ly trans­porta­tion and the chal­lenges that emerge when that sys­tem is dis­rupt­ed.