Problems Getting Commuters and Drivers To Use The Falmouth Bus Park

June 24, 2012 in Transportation by Brian Elliott

Problems Getting Commuters and Drivers To Use The Falmouth Bus Park

There is an on-going transportation problem in Falmouth caused primarily by the failure of the Trelawny Parish Council to provide a proper bus park for the town.

It is a major headache to get both commuters and drivers (bus and taxi) to use the makeshift bus park on Tharp Street (the former location of Dump Squatter settlement which was previously demolished). When we visited the facility and spoke with drivers, they pointed to 3 main problems:

1) Sanitary facilities are a work in progress, not yet complete.
2) The park is a dust bowl.
3) There is no shelter for commuters from sun and rain.
4) Finally, as a result of the 3 factors above, most commuters refuse to use the park and opt instead to wait for the vehicles on the streets.

For the past two weeks, the police have gone all-out to keep the vehicles from picking up passengers on the street. This bore some success for the first few days, but some commuters just refuse to use the park. A Duncans taxi driver told me the Duncans passengers refuse to use the park and it is extremely difficult to get a full load from in the park. The commuters wait on the street. The taxis have to go where the people are.

Falmouth is the capital and main town of Trelawny parish and is the transport hub for the entire parish. The busiest route is Falmouth to Montego Bay. The parish of St. James in which Montego Bay is located is the greatest source of employment for Trelawny’s citizens outside of Trelawny plus the commercial activities in Montego Bay lure many of our citizens to that city. The two other busiest routes are the Falmouth to Duncans and Falmouth to Clarkes Town routes.

Before the Falmouth Pier development, there was no transportation center. A temporary one was first set up at 1 Market Street, but it had no sanitary facilities and was located in a church yard. The park was moved to the current location but it too was earmarked as a temporary location. The permanent location we were told, was to be somewhere on Market Street in the vicinity of the proposed site of the new market. Well, we have been waiting on the new market and the bus park, with no idea as to when these miracles will occur.

In the meantime, the police are left with the headache of getting people to use the bus park and keep the congestion off the street. What is happening is another case of what occurs when politicians put people last, they take the law into their own hands. If proper temporary facilities were built in the first place, it would have been easier to get people to use the facilities. Instead we see fancy port facilities and everything else put in place for the visitors, yet when it comes to local Jamaicans, nothing is ever right.