Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne con­firmed that 24 ve­hi­cles were wrecked yes­ter­day, as en­force­ment re­sumed across the cap­i­tal’s busi­ness dis­trict.

Al­leyne said the ini­tia­tive is a joint ef­fort be­tween the TTPS POS Di­vi­sion and the City, re­spond­ing to com­plaints from the PTSC, Fire Ser­vice and taxi as­so­ci­a­tions about in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing that ob­structs bus­es, emer­gency ve­hi­cles and taxi stands.

“Of­ten, bus­es and emer­gency ve­hi­cles have dif­fi­cul­ty tra­vers­ing the city cen­tre, and many of our taxi stands have turned in­to park­ing lots.

“Re­duc­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion in the city is an im­por­tant part of in­creas­ing the num­ber of shop­pers down­town and stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” he added.

One tow truck han­dled Mon­day’s re­movals.

The City Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced that all towed ve­hi­cles will be tak­en to the South Quay Carpark Fa­cil­i­ty for stor­age, which was fund­ed through last year’s De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

Fur­ther im­prove­ments have been shelved due to bud­get cuts.

Busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives have raised con­cerns about un­clear park­ing reg­u­la­tions.

Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, said, “Port-of-Spain does not have clear­ly de­fined park­ing reg­u­la­tions. We have made this point re­peat­ed­ly, in­clud­ing in re­cent meet­ings with the new min­is­ter. We des­per­ate­ly want to dis­cuss a park­ing plan and an agreed-up­on, mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial set of rules that en­sures smooth traf­fic flow while al­so pro­vid­ing con­ve­nience for shop­pers in the city.”

Al­leyne en­cour­aged dri­vers to fol­low all traf­fic rules and said the city looks for­ward to con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with stake­hold­ers to en­sure a clean­er and more or­gan­ised down­town.