The early bird catches the worm

Jul 18, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – Of course, the worm has never had legal representation. Nor has it had to find parking on Regent Street.

If you really want to understand Georgetown’s parking crisis, you must rise before dawn. Not because you have suddenly developed an enthusiasm for sunrise or bird watching, but because only those who arrive before the city awakens can witness how quickly the city’s limited number of parking spaces being occupied.

Long before the heavy traffic begins, long before the office workers begin their ritual of arriving for work, long before the first government office unlocks its doors, the curbside parking on Regent Street and around the other commercial arteries is already occupied.

By whom? By the vehicles owned or used by vendors who have colonised the pavements, parapets.

The remaining spaces are then swiftly occupied by employees of government ministries, banks, insurance companies and private businesses. This all happens well before 8:00 a.m.

Yet every time someone proposes a parking solution it usually involves the need to provide more parking. The latest incarnation of this solution involves the need for multi-level parking garages.

It is an appealing fantasy. The problem is not that Georgetown lacks parking. The problem is that Georgetown contains more economic activity than the physical city was ever designed to accommodate.

This is rather like trying to solve obesity by purchasing a larger belt. The belt may become more accommodating, but the underlying problem remains enthusiastically intact.

People point to multi-storied parking as a solution. But history has already conducted the experiment. Port of Spain tried it decades ago. So did other cities.

Trinidad discovered something fascinating about human nature. People did not particularly enjoy parking several hundred yards away and then walking to their destination under a tropical sun while carrying shopping bags.

Human beings possess an astonishing preference for parking exactly where they intend to be. If possible, they would like to drive directly into the supermarket aisle. We now have on Robb Street a drive-through market. Cars simply drive through the aisle of vendors on Robb Street, purchasing their fruits and vegetables without having to leave their vechicles, and oblivious to the congestion blocks away.

Then there is the delicate subject of illegal vending. One must approach this topic cautiously because it has become our national version of discussing relatives who never leave after Christmas dinner.

The sidewalks disappear beneath stalls. The curbside disappears beneath caravans. The parking intended for customers quietly transforms into permanent commercial space. Then we wonder why shoppers circle endlessly like vultures searching for an available parking space.

If illegal vending were properly regulated or relocated, a remarkable number of parking spaces would suddenly reappear without pouring a single cubic metre of concrete. This would constitute the first miracle achieved through enforcement rather than engineering.

The larger issue, however, is that Georgetown has outgrown itself. The old city was designed around a relatively modest commercial district.

Nobody envisioned today’s sprawling concentration of businesses, government offices, schools, banks, restaurants, markets, pharmacies, lawyers, accountants, agencies and every conceivable commercial activity all competing for the same finite network of streets.

It is the urban planning equivalent of inviting five hundred guests into a drawing room built for fifty and then expressing surprise when someone ends up sitting on the piano.

Every new business attracts employees. Every employee requires transportation. Almost every customer arrives with a vehicle. Every additional government office generates another daily migration into the city. Then we announce another parking study.

The obvious solution is not politically glamorous, which explains why it receives so little attention. Commercial activity must be decentralised. Some government ministries, why not the Ministry of Agriculture? for example, could function perfectly well outside the city.  Businesses should be encouraged to establish themselves beyond Georgetown’s increasingly exhausted commercial core. Schools, government services and commercial enterprises should no longer be concentrated in Georgetown.

Instead, we continue to behave as though every solution involves squeezing one more person into an already crowded elevator. Naturally, a lasting solution requires political courage. Restricting illegal vending requires political courage. Limiting commercial expansion requires political courage. Relocating government services requires political courage.

Unfortunately, political courage is rather like affordable waterfront property. Everyone speaks fondly about it, but remarkably little is available when needed.

The municipality hesitates over vending. The government hesitates over confronting influential commercial interests.

Meanwhile, Georgetown continues performing its daily impression of a pressure cooker whose safety valve has been welded shut. So perhaps we should retire the dream of salvation through another parking garage.

The early bird has already shown us the truth. By the time most of us arrive, the parking spaces have not disappeared. They have merely revealed what the city has been trying to tell us all along: Georgetown is not suffering from a parking shortage. It is suffering from an excess of everything else.

And until we summon the courage to reduce the pressure instead of merely expanding parking, the only creature guaranteed to catch anything early in the morning will remain that legendary bird, assuming, of course, it can find somewhere legal to park.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• early bird, Georgetown's parking crisis, Peeping Tom, worm

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