Different Face Different Places

Lady making her way down town from bus terminal Many Afro-Trinidadians utilise the public transport services.

Different Face Different Places

As mentioned before in our “To buy a car or not buy a car? That is the question” blog diversity on public transportation in Trinidad is limited. This is due to the fact the racial divide that occurs in Trinidad. Afro-Trinidadians tend to work lower wage earning jobs while Indo-Trinidadian tend to work more professional jobs. This leads to more Afro-Trinidadians being unable to afford to purchase their own car. Additionally, the smaller white population of Trinidad tend to be business wealthy business owners who would not be caught dead on a maxi travelling to Port of Spain.

In essence, Afro-Trinidadians make up the majority of the faces you see on the maxies in Trinidad. Adrica Simmion, a regular maxi traveller, confessed that main “black” people take maxi. She stated that Indo-Trinidadians usually have their own cars that they drive.

However, the buses are a much different case. The Public Transports Service Cooperation (PTSC) busses run straight from the eastern side of the island down to the southern side of the island. The southern areas of Trinidad are known to have a predominately Indo-Trinidadian population. Hence, it is not uncommon to see many Indo-Trinidadians on the PTSC buses flocking downing South on the weekends. This is especially true for university students who live down south but study at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus in the northern section of the island.

According to one such student of Analice Ramkisson, who lives in a small settle just outside Princetown, travelling home by bus on weekends feels like a huge reward for the long she has had. According to Analice life down south is much nicer. It’s where most of her family and friends so she does not mind the long bus ride. Analice agreed she’d love to have her parents come pick her up in the family car but that is not always possible as both of them work so she makes the sacrifice and takes the bus home. She continued to say that she could stay up if they can not come for her but she would much rather the slight inconvenience of the bus to get home than staying up on the northern side of island. Analice additionally confessed that she never takes a maxi to go anywhere, as she never goes to Port of Spain and her parents always drop her into Princetown if she needs to go.

According to Glaeser et al. (2006), more than 19 percent of people in cities are poor vs only 7.5 percent of persons in suburbs. This corresponds with Analice’s statement that she has no need to take public transport besides to “down south” on the weekends. Another student, also of Indo-Trinidadian decent, Vinash Ramdass, states that he has no need to take maxi or bus as he has a car given to him by his parents. He admits he never goes into Port of Spain as he has need to. He confessed that his mother does all of his shopping “down south”.

The mere fact that finding statistics to validate the observations made shows an even deeper underlying problem. For such an ethnically diverse country like Trinidad one would expect there to be many studies done on the economic disparities between the various races.

According to Ashlee, an Afro-Trinidadian UWI student from Arima, travelling to and from school, Port of Spain and anywhere else via maxi is her fate which she endures because she is not fortunate enough to be able to afford a car. As stated in our “To buy a car or not buy a car? That is the question” cars are an expensive asset. According to Ashlee, catching maxi is common people of her “type”, meaning people of her race. She further states that she often takes trips to Port of Spain with her mother and sometimes friends, to shop.

According to Seiler (2007) historically “black” persons were not allowed to take public transport. If they did they were subjected to police harassment and bigotry. Seiler (2007) states that only “elite blacks” such athletes and entertainers were permitted on public transport. Surely things have come a long way. Now “blacks” dominate the public transport railways while other races avoid them.

Steven Williams, a Caucasian Trinidadian, who is an executive manager on board of companies, confess that he hates taking any form of public transport and rarely ever ventures into the city, unless on business. He says he’d rather drive himself and pay the high cost of parking in one of the many car parks in the city as mentioned in our “The Economics of Parking in Port of Spain”. He added that he has not taken a maxi since his very early school days. Not to make the other races left out, Jenna, of Spanish Venezuelan descent and Chang of Asian descent, when speaking to us admitted that they have never taken a maxi in their lives as there families have always been fortunate enough to have had cars. It was then discovered that Jenna’s parents are store owners and Chang’s parents own numerous Chinese restaurants. They further disclosed that they too rarely ever venture into Port of Spain, but do most of their shopping at the mall where there is better parking.

Clearly, there is a limited diversity on the public railways. This lack of diversity seems mainly driven by economic disparities in the country. I wonder if anyone else noticed.