WESTERN BUREAU – Plans to set up, by next Monday, new terminals for taxis that ply several routes in Montego Bay have not gone down well with some cab drivers and commuters.

The new rules, the result of collaboration between the St James Parish Council, the Transport Authority and the police, will see taxis on the Mount Salem, Retirement, Tucker and John’s Hall routes assigned to the St James Parish Church car park at the corner of Creek Street and St Clavers Avenue.

Taxis operating on the Sangster International Airport and Flankers routes will be asked to park at the Barnett Street car park. They will have to travel along the Howard Cooke Boulevard and will not be allowed to stop along any section of Barnett Street, now a common practice.

The city managers have long tried, unsuccessfully, to bring some modicum of order on the streets of the western resort city, by enforcing no-parking rules and prosecuting cabbies who cause traffic congestion by picking up or dropping off passengers at spots that inconvenience other drivers.

While he agreed with the fundamental idea of the proposed changes, vice-president of the National Association of Taxi Association Nickoyan Robinson predicted that the new system would create tension between commuters and taxi operators.

“Although it will be easy for the taxi men to go to the park, it is not convenient for the passengers,” he said, adding that commuters travelling from Flankers into the city would be inconvenienced if their rides ended only at the Barnett Street car park.

“If a person is going to Market Street or Union Street, there is no stopping on the highway. Taxi men have to pass those streets with the people and take them to the park, and the commuters in turn walk back down to where they are going. The passengers are complaining about this.”

Robinson suggested that more passenger/commuter-friendly terminals should be found. He maintained that a suggestion that the parcel of land on the Howard Cooke Boulevard, between the KFC parking lot and the North Gully Bridge, be used for the “Bottom Road” and Flankers taxi-operators had been turned down by the Urban Development Corporation.

Robinson has proposed that the Montego Bay Craft Market be relocated and the site converted into a parking lot that can accommodate the city’s taxis.

Meanwhile, some commuters have raised concern about the terminals proposed by the council and transport officials.

One Mount Salem woman expressed outrage that the Creek Street venue offered little protection from rain and lacked bathroom facilities.

“If rain a fall what them expect we fi do? Where them expect we fe shelter and where them expect we fe urinate?” asked the woman who opted not to supply her name.

However, Montego Bay’s mayor Noel Donaldson explained that the council was looking at other potential locations that could be used as terminals.

The proposed changes, he said, had stemmed from concerns about the proliferation of illegally parked taxis throughout the streets of the city.

Meanwhile, lawmen appear ready to enforce the new parking rules.

“We will be going all out,” said Inspector Winston Milton, the officer in charge of traffic for the St James division. “We will be prosecuting those who fail to comply and as for those who are holders of road licences, after repeated prosecution we will be making recommendations to the Transportation Authority to have their licences revoked,” he added.