June 7, 2019

Mr. Speaker, I would
also like to extend congratulations to the Ombudsman
for Bermuda, who last week hosted the 10
th Biennial
CAROA [Caribbean Ombudsman Association] Conference here in Bermuda which was attended by 17 countries from the Caribbean and Central America. Mr. Speaker, I had the distinct pleasure of chairing
one of the panels, on Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Ombudsmanship. And I was pleased that
there were representatives from seven jurisdictions, led by our own very distinguished Dr. Mark Guishard,
who spoke about, in particular, hurricanes in Berm uda, where you will know, Mr. Speaker, we have a lot
of experience. And oftentimes, when w e suffer, our
fellow countries to the south suffer hurricane damage, we are some of the first people to call on that exper ience.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to extend
congratulations to the five young men who participated in the Alpha Beautilli on last Sunday at CedarBridge
Academy:
• Mr. Antonio Carvelho, Impact Mentoring
Academy;
• Jehkio Bean- Lightbourne, Mount Saint Agnes
Academy;
• Dimitrius Richardson, the Berkeley Institute;
• Sediq Simons, the Bermuda Institute; and
• Myles Smith, of CedarBridge A cademy.
Mr. Speaker, I can say without fear of contr adiction that these five outstanding young men really
acquitted themselves with distinction last week. I am
glad I was not on the panel having to judge them, because it would have been a very difficult task. I am
pleased to say, though, Mr. Speaker, that young Dim itrius Richardson, who is the son of my administrative
assistant and was a summer student at the Ministry
last summer, really gave an outstanding, outstanding
performance on every single front.
This young man came to the Ministry last
year, and he was an introvert and quiet, and you
know, you would not even know that he was in the room. And I just sat in awe. Needless to say, his m ama screamed down the entire building. But he really,
really gave an outstanding representation of what young men in this country can do, along with the other four.
And I am just encouraged, Mr. Speaker, just
as somebody who lives in this village, not in any formal capacity, at the outstanding performance of young
men in this country. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would just like to join with the Honourable
and gallant Member in my congratulations, as well, to


Bermu da House of Assembly the Ombudsman. I too attended the event last week.
And it was delightful to see such a gathering of independent members of integrity from the various ombudsmen around the Caribbean. My under standing is
that Bermuda was lucky enough to secure that event
because our very own Ombudsman, Victoria Pearman, has become the president of that local associ ation. I did have an opportunity to meet and discuss
with her the work that she is doing as Ombuds man,
and it is an incredibly important post that a democratic society such as ours should be proud of. So, I too add my congratulations to those of the Minister.

You should ass ociate the whole House
with that one.
Hon. E. David Burt: I will certainly, Mr. Speaker, associate the entire House with these remarks.
Many persons will know that Ms. Crockwell
was a long- time receptionist at the Cabinet Office. Her
spirit would brighten even that place and any other
place where she was. She was someone who was
known for loving life, incredibly fun. And we always
used to share a joke between each other regarding
our ages. She was kind to myself. She was kind to
every person who came into the Cabinet Office. She
was kind regardless of party or regardless of who you were. It was always her spirit.
She loved life, Mr. Speaker. And I remember
the one time she was even so famous as to be around
the world in a Soul Train Cruise advertisement, b ecause that is how much she enjoyed having an excel-lent time. And so, Mr. Speaker, I would ask that con-dolences be sent from this House to her family and
her mother, her children and her grandchildren, all of
her friends including her work colleagues, dur ing this
very difficult time. She has passed from labour to r eward, Mr. Speaker, but rest assured—her time on this
earth was spent enjoying life to the fullest.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to be associated
with the remarks from the Honourable Minister for
Public Works for the participants of the Alpha Beautillion, and particularly the winner, Mr. Dimitrius Ric hardson, of the Berkeley Institute. Yes, I will associate the whole House with those remarks, as well, Mr.
Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, with that, I wil l take my
seat.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise very happily today to offer
congratulations and thanks to both the Minister of
Tourism, the Honourable Zane De Silva, and Mr. P. H.
Horgan and his team, Mr. Bruno, for realising a dream
of mine from the days when I did play the professional
tour in Europe. To have an event of that magnitude in
Bermuda bodes well for tourism and for the sport
which is my trade. So, I want to congratulate them. I
do not want to lose sight of the fact that, in this country, we still do not have a National Championshi p,
which was the vehicle for this little country boy to get
access to the world. And I am sure, as the time has passed when this country has seen its players play for
peanuts, that we can now have the next tier down b elow have a greater purse in which to c ompete.
On a sad note, Mr. Speaker, I have some
constituents who have passed on to reward. Edward
Joseph “Jo Jo” Gibbons of Slip Road. And I associate the Honourable Member from constituency 1, MP
Ming, and I am sure MP Foggo, as well.
And also, Ms. Joan Wade, from Wellington
Lane, whom my mom went to school with at Alaska
Hall not just yesterday. And Ms. Wade was a very
dear spirit. And at Christmastime, when I paid her a
visit, she was so happy and actually gave some kni tted goods to take home to my de ar wife. And we always appreciated to find that connection with her and
my mom. It was extremely special.
And, Mr. Irvin Hayward, a long- time proprietor
of St. George’s Esso, former Member of the Corpor ation of St. George’s, and an avid sportsman—golf was
very much a part of his life. Snooker and the fitted
dinghy racing on May 24
th, and the life of St. George’s
Dinghy and Sports Club down there on Cut Road was
very much a part of his life and family.
So, we extend condolences to those three St.
Georgians and bereaved families right now, Mr.
Speaker. Thank you ever so much.

Thank you.
We recognise the Honourable Deputy Premier.
Honourable Deputy, you have the floor.
Hon. Walter H. Roban: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like, of course, to be associated with
the congratulatory remarks given to the Ombudsman
of Bermuda for the holding of the conference. I did
have the honour to give the opening remarks at that
1752 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly conference. And certainly, holding that regional conference here is a credit to the Island and to the work
of the Ombudsman and her office.
I would also like to ask the House to certainly
acknowledge and congratulate all of those residents and Bermudians who took time to note that it was
World Environment Day this week, and also to those
who see it important that the Island does take greater
concern for the environment that we live in. Although it
is only 22 square miles, plus another 200 square
miles of ocean, we have impact around the world that is not of small significance. And we should take time
as a community to acknowledge such important days.
And, in keeping with that, I would just like to
announce to the House that I have been informed by
persons in the Ministry of the Environment that a C ahow chick was fledged last night.

[Inaudible interjections]
Hon. Walter H. Roban: So, that is something that is
quite wonderful for us, as we know we were seeking
for many years to rebuild the petrel, the constituency
of a very unique bird that is indigenous to Bermuda.
So, there will be more official comments on that coming forth from my Ministry. But I thought I would let the
House know, as I have just been told, that which I know is great news to all of us.
I would also like to be associated with the
condolences that were given for Ms. C rockwell. But I
would also like to add to that message that she did
have a life prior to her time with us in the Government.
And that was as a member of a law firmed named Richards Francis and Francis, and she spent many
years there working. And I am sure that the Honour able Member, Minister Wayne Furbert, would like to be
associated with that, as well, as he would have been a
colleague of hers during that time that she would have
worked there, prior to her being a part of the gover nment family.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good
morning.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer congratul ations first to Inspector Na’imah Astwood, who was the
first runner -up at the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police. And I associate the Deputy
Premier. And I will associate the whole House, if that
is okay. Thank you.
Also, Constable Cer epha Bridgeman, who
actually is my parish constable in Southampton, who was awarded the second runner -up Top Caribbean
Community Policing Officer.
I would also like to give congratulations to
Tracey Armstrong, who organised a tribute to all of the pioneer ing police females who have broken through
the glass ceiling. And in particular, I would like to give
congratulations to Jean Vickers, who was Bermuda’s
first policewoman, who also celebrated her 85
th birthday on Wednesday, I believe it is. I associate Col e
Simons with that.
And I was not here last Friday, Mr. Speaker,
and I do not know if anybody gave congratulations to
those young children who ran the Heritage Day Invit ation Junior Classic?

I would like to associate Mr.
Swan.
And it is always a pleasure to see our young
people come out and run. We had a nice awards ceremony at the Bermuda College. So, I would like to
thank you for sponsoring this, for allowing our young
children to have an opportunity to showcase their ta lents. And I look forward to working with you on it for
another 21 years.

So, I associate the whole House with
that.
I would also like to give congratulations. Last
weekend was the Bermuda National Swimming Champions hip. And we had the high point winners in
the 12 and under, and 13 and over. So, the female 12
and under winner was Imogen Judd, and the 12 and
under male was Giulo Ligori. And in the 13 and over, it was Logan Watson Brown, and for the male, it was
Jack Ha rvey.
I would also like to—
[Inaudible interjections and laughter ]

Good morning, Mr. Speaker and
listening audience.
Although I have been associated with the
comments for Beunice Crockwell, I just wanted to add
my own story to this. Although I have known Ms. Crockwell through her children most of my life, I have
had the pleasure of really interacting with her when
she worked down in the Cabinet and I was in the
Senate. And I have to say that, week in and week out,
she always offered words of encouragement. And she
would always let me know about any topics or an ything that was relevant that she thought we should look into, and things like that. So, her engagement
was definitely there with us on a regular basis.
And so, it is extremely difficult to grasp what it
is that will become our norm. But we know that, I b elieve that she lived a fruitful life. She enjoyed life to the
best of her ability. And she will be remembered for many, many years to come.
One thing that I must mention, and no one
seems to have mentioned it, Mr. Speaker, is that she was an avid St. George’s supporter.

So, I do not know. Maybe the
Premier forgot and left that part out.
But I would also like to just say that Jo Jo,
who Kim already has given acknowledgement to, will
definitely be missed around St. George’s, as well. His
favourite line to me was, Are you going canvassing?
So, if he saw me at seven o’clock in the morning on
my walk, and he would say, You’re going canvassing?
So, I think that that became a common joke amongst
us.
But these are people who help you on a day -
to-day to get through and give you things to look forward to.
And I just also want to acknowledge, Mr.
Speaker, a young lady by the name of Sara Schroter Ross. And she is the youngest member, at the age of
37, to achieve the Chartered Director status. I would like to associate Nelson Cole [Simons] and Leah Scot t
with that. And I went in and had a read of it and her
achievement, and I encourage you to have a read of
it.
Also, I looked at it because when I hear and
see women doing things, it always makes me have a second look at it. And she is a young woman who is
doing things in her field. And one of the things that
she said is that she hopes that her attaining this at
such a young age, that she is able to encourage—she said men and women. But in this case, I am thinking of women, and letting them know that with hard work
and just keeping determination and keeping at it, we
as women will rise and will take what is our rightful
place. So, thank you, Mr. Speaker, on that note.

Good morning, Mr.
Speaker. Good morning, Bermuda.
I associate myself with [the condolences for]
Ms. Crockwell. What has been left out is that, before
everything else, she was a Pond dog, right on
Friswells Road. Also, she was what we call a BELCO
mom. Her son Garrett is my co- worker at BELCO. So,
every day she would say, Make sure you byes are
doing what you are supposed to do, you know. Don’t
put the Island in darkness. So, I just want to add that
to the equation, and that she was from St. George’s.
So, we have someone just in case we need a rain
dance this year.
Mr. Speaker, let me also speak about Ms.
Marion Gumbs Hayward of Dundonald Street, from
the St. Paul’s family. She, unfortunately, passed during a cruise with her St. Paul’s family. And she will be
funeralised tomorrow. She was the proud mom of five
children. I associate Brother Weeks and anybody at AME with that.
1754 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly What the Colonel left out, Mr. Speaker, was
Dimitrius. He d id not say that he was a Berkeleyite.
And he did not say he was Gold House. So, we are
proud of him, as well, Mr. Speaker.

I wonder why. Because he
said, Berkeleyites can’t count. Well, he wo n that,
didn’t he?
Mr. Speaker, moving on, a Bermuda College
culinary student, Mr. Tremayne Bailey, is doing an
apprenticeship over in Africa for eight weeks in conjunction with the Ace It Foundation, headed by Mr.
Quinton Sherlock. It is important, Mr. S peaker, that
our students get to see the wide world, because ev erybody eats. Not everybody just eats just in France or these fancy European places. We eat all around the
world. And it is very important that our students . . .
because remember, Mr. Speaker, there are 800 chefs
in Bermuda. Eighty per cent of them are non -
Bermudian. So, I am glad to see a young black male learning culinary arts.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to give a
shout -out to Wolves Sports Club of eastern Devonshire on their prize- giving ceremony tomorrow.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
We now recognise the Honourable Member
from constituency 7.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.
Mr. Sylvan D. Richards, Jr.: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to be associated
with the remarks that my fellow colleague, MP Ben
Smith, gave about the game last night. The Premier
was in attendance. Minister Foggo was in attendance.
MP Smith, obviously, was in attendance. MP Weeks
was in attendance. And if I am missing anyone, I give
my apologies.
But it was a fantastic atmosphere at the
game. It was good to see so many supporters out with their pink jerseys on, which is the colour that the N ational Team wears. It was an excellent game, as I
said. I t is interesting, both Bermuda and Guyana, Gold
Cup debutants. So, it was an interesting match- up
from that perspective.
And I have to give a big, big congratulations to
Coach Kyle Lightbourne. Since Kyle has taken over the helm, that team has really gro wn in leaps and
bounds. I could see the professionalism last night in
how they played. The style and the quality of Berm udian football has really, really improved. So, that was
great to see. Bermudian Nahki Wells was part of the line-up. But the goal was actually scored by Donte
Brangman. He scored a fabulous goal in the 37
th minute that brought everybody to their feet. So, I just want to congratulate the team. They have matches
coming up. And, yes, we have got to support them.
They are going to do great things. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to
be associated with the comments by the Member who
just sat down, congratulating the National Team. I just
want to remind him and others that that pink and blue
that you see now have become our national colours.
So, not only will you see the football team in it, but
hopefully every team or any team that represents our lovely Island. Yes.
I would also like to be associated, Mr. Speaker, with the condolences for, first of all, Ms. Crockwell
down at Cabinet Office. In the 10 years, Mr. Speaker,
that I have been an MP, I really got to know Ms. Crockwell. I did not know her before then. But she
was very encouraging with her smiles and her advice and encouragement. You know, sometimes, we as
Ministers used to go in there, and you are not feeling
the best, and she would always remind us we are doing the people’s business. And she would say som ething encouraging for us to carry on.
Mr. Speaker, I also would like to be associated with the remarks by the Member fro m constituency 11 for Ms. Hayward. Ms. Hayward was a close family friend of my family. Last week when she was on the cruise and she succumbed, Mr. Speaker, she was actually with my mom. So, Ms. Hayward was always
in and around my family. And it was a shock . It was a
shock what happened to her. And on behalf of my
family, Mr. Speaker, I want to send out condolences to Ms. Hayward’s family and hope that they will find solace in knowing that she is in a better place.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Good morning, Mr. Speaker,
and thank you.
I rise in this Honourable House this morning
on two very sad notes, Mr. Speaker, and ask that I
join colleagues in extending condolences to the family
of my family, Mr. James Prescott Robinson. Though
Uncle James was not my paternal uncle, he is the u ncle of my siblings, Senator Marcus Jones, Rev. St eBermu da House of Assembly phen Jones and our sister, Deborah King. He was a
humble man, s poke softly to me and will be greatly
missed by all who knew him. I am sure the family has
appreciated all of the extensions of sympathy, and I
rise today to honour and mark his remarkable contr ibution.
Mr. Speaker, on the second sad note, I join
honourab le colleagues in extending absolute condolences to the family of Beunice Crockwell, whose
passing has deeply affected us all. As you know, Mr.
Speaker, Beunice was an absolutely fantastic person. From the moment I stepped into the Cabinet Office for
the fi rst time as Press Secretary, I was met by
Beunice at the front desk. From the outset, she set me
straight, developed a friendship and, with her mischi evous wit, big smile and deep laugh, she made life absolutely bearable as the business of government overtook all of our lives.
Mr. Speaker, she was considerate and into lerant of arrogance, and she began every greeting
with, I just got back from a cruise. She will not appr eciate it, but I will give a short story, Mr. Speaker, really
quickly. My phone rang one morning in the Cabinet
Office, and it was Beunice. She demanded that I
come immediately to the front desk. On reaching the
back door of the Cabinet Office , one of the most celebrated Corporation of Hamilton city dwellers, “Scien-tist,” standing at the door, the back door, wearing only
his smile, facing Beunice, who was standing in the
doorway.

[Laughter]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I also would like to be associated with the r emarks giving obits to Ms. Beunice Crockwell. More
recently, [as I was] her Member of Parliament in constituency 4, she will be a big miss in the Duck’s Pud-dle community. Ms. Crockwell is actually my aunt. She
is the stepsister to my mom. And so, greatest cond olences to the family, to Nicole, to Garrett, to her mom, Shirley, and to Kal -Lyn. She will be a huge miss. She
constantly used to tell me how proud she was of me
and how proud she was of the Progressive Labour
Party, as well. So, she will be a big miss, and I just
could not not st and to my feet and acknowledge Ms.
Beunice Crockwell. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and
good morning, all.
Mr. Speaker, last week, I was under heavy
threat not to bring attention to this young lady. But this
week, I am going to weather the storm and hope that I
can send congratulations out to Ms. Virginia Butte rfield, better known as “Ducky ” Butterfield , my mother -
in-law, who celebrated 90 years of life, so far. She has
had a great life so far. And I hope that she has many more.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other . . .
We recognise the Honourable Opposition
Leader.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Yes. thank you. Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to add my comments and support
and condolences to certainly the loss of Ms. Beunice
Crockwell. I have many stories as well that I could tell,
having been there at Cabinet. And of course, we know
that she was a very lively and spirited person. When I
got the news, no one said her name. They just said,
Someone down at Cabinet had passed away. And I
said, Who? And they said, You know, the lady with the
big smile. And so characteristic and so well, they were
trying to describe because they did not know the
name. But what they did know was the character.

Yes.

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: And it was signified with a
smile, a massive smile. I used to tease her all the time
about her slightly bow legs. And her travels, of course,
were everything to her. We talked about the ethnic cruises that we had been on. And so, again, I would
like to say to the Crockwell family, our deepest condolences.
Now understanding that we have a Member
whom she was an aunt of, our deepest condolences
go out to you for such a big name, certainly a loss.
And I know that I also want to speak to the
Cabinet employees there. This is a second loss for
1756 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly them. Almost within a year, they have lost another
member there. And so, I know that they are really
reeling and suffering right now because that team
down there is very, very, very close. And so, I want them to know, the family and her fellow employees,
that we are all thinking of them at this time.
Also, I would like to speak to, as the Honourable Member from constituency 2 spoke about, Jo Jo. And I must admit, Gibo there, I used him as a clock.
Because if I was late, I missed him. But if I was on
time, I would see him first thing in the morning on the road, Wellington Slip Road. He lived literally four
houses down from myself with us all there, a very
close group there. And my condolences go out to the
family. I know the family extremely well, and I know
that they are trusting in their Lord and Saviour during
this time.
Also, one other item for condolences, Mr.
Speaker. Mr. Irvin Hayward down in St. George’s
passed away. And I speak of him because we were
part of the same group of owning service stations.
And I have been around 15 years doing this, but he
certainly probably triples that in the amount of time
that he has been around, serving the East End with
fuel. And so, another character, another person wh o
was part of the St. George’s fabric who has been lost.
On a higher note, I would like to congratulate
the National Team. I did not get a chance to see the
game last night, Mr. Speaker. So, I want to congrat ulate them.

[Timer beeps]

Thank y ou.
I now recognise the Honourable Member,
Minister Simmons.
You have the floor.

Hon. Jamahl S. Simmons: Thank you, Mr. Speaker,
and good morning, all.
I rise today to add my voice to the list of pe ople paying tribute to Ms Beunice Crockwell, who was
a dear family friend, a good friend to my parents. They were cruising buddies. And one thing I can say about
Beunice is that she had a passion and a love of life.
And to the extent that most of us who knew her, whether as family or friends, we never believ ed that
she was ill, never believed that there was anything
wrong up until the day . . . I mean, she was still pos ting on Facebook. She was still laughing. She was still doing her thing up until the time when she took her
last breath.
And I think that, during my time at the Cabinet
Office versus the Premier’s Chief of Staff, and then
just throughout the years, she was always a calm and
reassuring voice. She was always a supportive shoul-der to lean on. She was always there for us. And I
hope at this time that we are all there for her family and all who loved her. And we wish them best wishes
as they try and deal with this very sad time.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
No further speakers on condolences and congratulations?
I recognise the Honourable Member from
constituency 36.
Hon. Michael J. Scott: Mr. Speaker, thanks.
Mr. Speaker, I was jotting a few notes of observances in respect of Ms. Beunice Crockwell. So, sir, in adding my observances of condolences, I of
course adopt and associate myself with my co lleagues, particularly my colleague, the Member for constituency 32, Mr. Scott Simmons, for his eloquent
observance for Ms. Crockwell.
Beunice served in the first PLP Government,
Mr. Speaker, led by Dame Jennifer. You were there.
Dame Lois was there. Mr. C. Eugene Cox, Honour able Alex Scott, any number. We all know the team. And I am sure that, for those of the Members of that
Government who are still with us, I express on their
behalf the condolences to the family of Ms. Crockwell.
Beunice Crockwell loved, I know, Dame Lois. Dame
Lois is dead. Dame Lois Browne- Evans loved Beunice
Crockwell. Now Beunice is dead. Love conquers
death.
Thank you.

Members, it is now 11:20, and we are
on the Orders of the Day. And the first and only Order
for today is Order No. 5, which is a motion in the
name of the Minister of Transport in reference to the
Green Paper on the future of transport.
Minister, would you like to move your motion?

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Yes.

MOTION

2019 GREEN PAPER ON TRANSPORT
Hon. Zane J. S. De Si lva: Mr. Speaker, I move that
the House do now take under consideration the following motion, notice of which was given on the 17
th of
May 2019:
WHEREAS the Government undertook in the
2017 Speech from the Throne to conduct a thorough
review of transportat ion and to produce a Green P aper on the future of transport in Bermuda that will pr ovide various options for modernisation, which also
takes into account the needs of the differently abled;
AND WHEREAS the Government recognises
that technology is modernis ing transportation globally
and that Bermuda must examine those trends when
taking into account the future of public and private transportation; BE IT RESOLVED THAT this Honourable
House supports the recommendations and priorities set out in the Green Paper on Transport 2019.

Continue on.
No objections to that?
I am glad it was such a long intro on that one.
No objections to it, Minister. Continue.

[Laughter]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, today we look forward to debating the findings of the 2019 Transport Green Paper, a
Ministry of Tourism and Transport initiative on behalf
of the Government of Bermuda from the 2017 Speech
from the Throne that was published on the 17
th of
May.
Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Tourism and
Transport conducted a thorough review of transport ation in Bermuda and collected the combined thoughts and comments of 21,567 residents, students and public authorities, as well as business groups and visitors,
who took the time to be intervi ewed or surveyed during the stakeholder consultation period between N ovember 2017 and December 2018.
Generally speaking, Mr. Speaker, the 2019
Transport Green Paper highlights the demand for
more (1) reliable public bus transportation; (2) reliable
taxi s ervice; (3) affordable and reliable motorised
wheelchair transport options; (4) safe spaces to walk
and cycle, including smoother road surfaces;
(5) regulations to provide for training standards for
public service vehicle drivers, taxi and minibus; and
(6) transportation infrastructure and services provided
in an energy efficient and intelligent way.
Mr. Speaker, to get the transportation conve rsation started, I will focus my comments only on the following areas:
1. the public bus service;
2. student public transportation;
3. accessibility transportation;
4. dark visors on helmets;
5. road traffic;
6. active transport; and
7. balancing air and cruise passenger traffic
flows.
Mr. Speaker, the 2018 Public Transport Survey and 2017 Visitor Survey results indicate that the
public bus service is used mostly by visitors and
school students. However, commuters have a strong ridership as well, and we all agree that these three groups require reliable and punctual bus service.
These factors can contribute to a more reliable bus
service and a decrease in, if not elimination of, bus
cancellations. The first is a change in the public bus
schedule to reduce the number of buses needed at
peak times and throughout the day. The second is
restoration of budget allocation to allow for new bus1758 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly es, new bus purchases. And third, a proper annual
maintenance budget.
The Government continues to act on all of
these three factors, even though we are still faced
with the challenges after introducing the new bus schedule in March and reverting back to the old one
six weeks later. With or without a new bus schedule,
tracking buses and obtaining real -time information on
punctuality is one customer service feature of public
transport that Bermuda can and should embrace. It
requires the installation of GPS trac king software and
equipment on all buses.
At present, only a small percentage of buses
have this capability. Part of modernising Bermuda’s bus fleet involves bringing this capability to residents’ and visitors’ smartphones, which Government is
committed t o doing. Work has already begun with
Global Transit for GPS bus tracking in real time. This is taking place alongside the steps to identify available
and affordable technology to implement the cashless,
digital fare media solution with real -time trip -planning
features. Rounding out the customer experience will
be the availability of Wi -Fi on all public transport.
Mr. Speaker, future planning of public bus
routes and schedules must be based on more than anecdotal evidence. The Department of Public Transportation requires actual ridership information. At pr esent, there are no passenger counts being carried out
on public buses either manually or with automatic
counters. The Government will seek to outfit the bus
fleet with the necessary equipment to enable aut omatic passenger counts.
Mr. Speaker, with respect to the purchase of
new buses, the majority of buses manufactured in the
world are still diesel driven. Given that fossil fuels are
non-renewable, fuel costs are high and diesel emi ssions contribute to gre enhouse gases, public transit
authorities are increasingly turning to hybrid diesel -
electric, biofuel powered, or battery electric alternatives. For Bermuda, a transition to a full fleet of battery
electric buses, which may or may not use solar energy
as a power source, requires assessment of the cost
not only of the buses, but also the charging infrastructure, equipment and training.
The Government is currently reviewing its options and signed an MOU last year with Rocky Mou ntain Institute, USA, to invest igate the feasibility of and
develop a strategy for a transition from current fossil
fuel infrastructure to electric bus fleet.
The Ministry will use ridership counts and undertake a route analysis to determine the feasibility
and viability of using small vehicles to overcome the
first-mile/last -mile challenge, as well as consider the
role small vehicles might play in delivery of bus service.
Mr. Speaker, 72 per cent of the middle and
senior students surveyed felt that a dedicated school bus would make t hem feel safer going to and from
school. Should capital funds be found to implement a dedicated school bus service, this would allow commuter bus runs to be used primarily by commuters
rather than students. Importantly, bus operators will
be able to deliver students closer to their schools r ather than to the nearest bus stop.
Mr. Speaker, with respect to public transport
by ferry, the Government is committed to rebuilding
and/or replenishing the fleet in a phased manner by
using fast, size- appropriate and fuel -efficient vessels.
This will enable Marine and Ports to gain flexibility in the deployment of the fleet such that it can potentially consider additional stops and/or an extended schedule. The current fleet of high- speed ferries is too expensive to operate with any greater flexibility. As with
the buses, ferry timings, current locations, et cetera,
can be incorporated into a Passenger Information Act.
Mr. Speaker, on the subject of accessibility,
the 11 public service vehicles on the road today are insufficient for the number of disabled persons living in
Bermuda. And that number [of 11 vehicles] cannot service visitors to the Island, either. In the first i nstance, the Government supports the establishment of
a national register so that there is certainty about the
level and type of disability and the number of persons
affected. The Ministry of Tourism and Transport can
work with the Ministry of Health to complete this task,
recognising that issues of privacy apply. With a more
complete understanding of need and the gap in ser-vice, the Ministry of Transport will work with the Mini stry of Finance regarding more favourable importation
conditions for vehicles providing transport to disabled
persons.
Additionally, Mr. Speaker, the Government will
review opti ons for disabled transportation service for
residents that is based in the private sector, but which
may require initial funding assistance in the form of a
grant. There are existing organisations providing such services that, in the first instance, may require financial assistance to stabilise their organisation and ex-pand their offerings. It is the Government’s view that a
subsidy could be a practical alternative to correcting
the infrastructure, which is 720 bus stops, needed for
the public bus service t o provide disabled transport ation.
Mr. Speaker, the Transport Control Depar tment [TCD] will issue permits to minibus operators
seeking to import motorised wheelchair accessible
vehicles to the Island. TCD had 20 applications for
minibus permits with motor ised wheelchair accessibi lity, and once these vehicles are on the road, this will increase the available lift for wheelchairs from 11 pub-lic service vehicles to 31 public service vehicles, as an
interim solution.
Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Transport is
committed to working with the Ministry of Health to determine training standards needed for drivers of
public service vehicles who provide transport for di fferently abled persons. In addition, the Ministry of
Transport will undertake a review of its terminals,


Bermu da House of Assembly docks, bus stops, buses and ferries to identify i mprovements for signage and hailing for the physically,
visually and hearing impaired.
Mr. Speaker, with respect to road traffic, the
Government takes seriously its responsibility to en-sure our roads are safe, well -lit and comfortable for all
those to use. And they include walkers, pedal cyclists,
motorcyclists, and car and truck drivers. There is no
doubt, however, that the motoring public must take
responsibility for its own actions, too.
Mr. Speaker, banning dark visors on helmets
is something that the Ministry of Tourism and Transport will seriously consider in light of the robberies that have taken place in broad daylight by persons wearing full dark visor helmets. We understand it would take some time to ensure that the right regul ations are in place, because there are many models and types of visors that are affixed to helmets. The
dealers will need some time to determine an exit
strategy for the offending product and ensure that new
helmets meet new guidelines.
Also, the Ministry will work with the Ministry of
National Security regarding the possible installation of speed cameras as part of an enhanced road safety
scheme, and will work with the City of Hamilton and
the Ministry of Public Works r egarding the installation
of traffic light CCTV cameras to better manage and
enforce vehicular flows through the traffic lights.
Mr. Speaker, the Government, working in co njunction with the Bermuda Road Safety Council, C ADA, Bermuda Police Service and TCD will continue to
work to change Bermuda’s reckless driving culture through education, enforcement and technology. TCD is reviewing the current traffic handbook and licensing
requirements to determine what modernisation is necessary and to take steps to im plement changes. And,
Mr. Speaker, TCD is reviewing the penalties laid out in
the Road Traffic Act 1947 with a view to updating and
strengthening them as per the stakeholder recommendations in the Transport Green Paper. In addition,
the Bermuda Road Safety Council is currently working
with the Ministry of Education to implement the next
phase of Operation Caution, which will include road safety education as part of the school curriculum from
an early age.
Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Tourism and
Transport will initiate discussions with the Ministry of
Home Affairs and Stevedoring Services regarding the possible installation of truck scales at the Hamilton
docks, as it will be good to know the weight of cargo
traveling on Bermuda’s roads to better manage and
protect them.

[Noise from electronic device]

Members. Can you sort that out?

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Mr. Speaker, the Gover nment is also keen to encourage active transport as we tackle the impact of obesity and diabetes on our population . However, the Public Transportation Survey r evealed justifiable concerns regarding our road safety.
Respondents indicated overwhelmingly that more
sidewalks and better lighting would make walkers feel safer. Indeed, an active transport culture thrives
where footpaths and sidewalks provide pedestrian
protection, and pedal bikes are separated from motorised vehicular traffic.
The Government recognises that the ability to
provide new sidewalks and bicycle lanes is very li mited by the existing road widths and the extent of pr ivate land ownership. Nonetheless, residents can be
urged to walk to the nearest bus or ferry dock. The
Bermuda Railway Trail presents an immediate opportunity for residents to become more active by walking
and cycling. Government will inv estigate where sidewalks can be added to enable pedestrian safety. In
addition, Mr. Speaker, Government will continue to
assist the work of the Friends of the Railway Trail by
taking on maintenance and repair of each new connection and the landscaping of t he trail as a whole.
Mr. Speaker, you will be aware that there has
been a significant increase in the number of cruise
ship passenger arrivals between 1999 when 195,000
visited Bermuda, and 2018 when the Island received
484,000 cruise passengers. This repr esents an i ncrease of 289,339 passengers, or 148 per cent, in the
last 20 years. This is significant because the 2012
National Tourism Plan anticipated an increase in
cruise passenger arrivals to 428,000 by year 2022.
This means that in 2018, a full five y ears before the
goal date, Bermuda hosted approximately 56,000
more passengers than originally targeted in the 2012
plan.
Mr. Speaker, accommodating this growth in
cruise passengers, the 2018 cruise ship strategy
evolved to include a strong focus on the increasing
cruise ship passenger spending and attracting a mi xture of small premium cruise ships for Hamilton and
the Town of St. George’s. It also sought to extend the
cruise ship season either side of the April to October
period. The Ministry of Tourism and Transport recognises that 2018 was something of a tipping point for
the cruise ship activity, especially with six cruise ships in port on the 31
st of October 2018. In 2019, the cruise
arrivals are estimated to rise to 545,000 passengers.
Now, Mr. Speaker , today compared to 1999,
there are 30 fewer public buses in inventory. There are 24 fewer community service vehicles. There are 44 fewer taxis on the road, for an assortment of reasons. There are 73,000 fewer air visitors than in 2018.
But 350,000 more cr uise ship passengers are expected in 2019. This creates an overwhelming need
for additional modern transportation infrastructure.
Bermuda requires more public buses and ferries, reliable taxis and minibuses, tugboats, a pilot boat, and pier enlargements and upgrades to service
the needs of the cruise ships and cruise ship passen1760 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly gers, as well as the International Maritime obligations
that accompany our shipping industry. Mr. Speaker,
there is a need to better balance air and cruise passenger traffic flows t hroughout Bermuda. As a result,
the Ministry of Tourism and Transport, and the BTA
[Bermuda Tourism Authority] are developing some
recommendations for a new cruise ship strategy
through to 2028. These recommendations take into
consideration the critical need to upgrade Bermuda’s
transport infrastructure, and ultimately will be benef icial for everyone—residents, air visitors and cruise
ship passengers.
In short, Mr. Speaker, we recognise that the
successful and economically beneficial execution of a new crui se ship strategy depends on an equally successful transportation infrastructure strategy that is as
identified in the Transport Green Paper.
Mr. Speaker, the Government does not intend
on producing a White Paper, as mentioned a couple
of times since the publishing of the transport paper
itself. The Ministry of Tourism and Transport, on be-half of the Government, has started preparing mem orandums for Cabinet’s consideration and approval. For example, amendments to the Motor Car Act 1951,
the Motor Taxi Regulations 1952, Auxiliary Bicycles
Act 1954 and the Road Traffic Act 1947, to address
shared rides with taxis, regulations for minibuses, en-hanced regulations for electric bicycles, dark visors on
helmets, and increased fines for road traffic offences.
In clos ing, Mr. Speaker, may I remind the li stening public that they still have until June 17
th to
submit to the Ministry any inquiries or comments r egarding the findings of the 2019 Transport Green P aper, by writing to the following email address:
transportgreenpaper@gov.bm
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to thank the Minister for bringing
forward this Transportation Green Paper. I think we all
would agree that transportation does need to be ad-dressed in Bermuda.
Public transportation provides a basic mobility
service to people who either do not have transport ation, do not have access to transportation or simply choose to ride the buses there because they do not
want to be caught up on the congestion of traffic getting to and from work. So, it is important also . . . sorry, the other thing is that it is important for our children
to be able to get back and forth to school, and for
them to be able to get back and forth to school on time.
So, I would support having a dedicated bus
service. I remember, because I gre w up in the States, that we would have a yellow school bus. And it would
come through our neighbourhood, and it would pick us
up for school. And that was the only transportation
that was utilised for us to get to school. So, I think that
having a dedicated bus [service] would be very good
for the reasons that the Minister has laid out in the
Green Paper.
We know that the bus dispute has been an
ongoing saga. And while the purported new schedule did not work out and they have had to revert back to
the old s chedule, we really need to figure out how we
can get a viable schedule in place. And while the
Government blames the bus issues on lack of hiring
by the OBA, [these issues are] not really [due to a lack
of] workers.
I mean, in the Government’s own paper here,
it says that (if you will allow me to quote from it), “Three factors can contribute to a more reliable bus
service and a decrease in, if not an elimination of, bus
cancellations: first, a change in the public bus schedule to reduce the number of buses needed at peak
times and throughout the day; two, restoration of a
budget allocation to allow for new bus purchases and,
three, a proper annual maintenance budget. The
Government continues to act on all three of these factors.”
Nowhere does it say that t hey did not have
enough workers to service the buses and, because the OBA did not fill positions, that is why we have i ssues with the buses.

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: I thought it was being nice
to you.

While public transportation does
not provide a great revenue stream, it provides a service. I think that it is notable that there are currently
23,376 students and seniors who ride the buses. And
I am happy to see in the paper that they ar e looking to
reverting back to having schoolchildren being charged to ride the bus during the weekend (I think I have it right), riding free during the week and then paying for
buses on the weekends. And so, I think that will i ncrease the amount of revenue. I do not think that seniors should be charged anything, because I am a senior now, so I do not want to pay to ride the bus.

[Laughter]

I am a senior.
So, we have to also look, Mr. Speaker, at
what is a sustainable bus schedule? We have been
talking about this bus schedule now for 17 years.
What does it take to get a proper bus schedule in place? And what will it take to also address the needs


Bermu da House of Assembly of the bus drivers in terms of health and safety, and all
of their concerns that they have been discussing for
the past week?
There is talk in the paper about introducing a
driver recertification. And I guess that would be anal ogous to lawyers or accountants getting continuing l egal education units. And, you know, I would support a
driver recer tification. And I think that there is also
mentioned in the paper the “Train the Trainer” pr ogramme. And I would like to have an update from the
Minister on that programme. How long is the pr ogramme? How many people have been through that
programme? What exactly does the programme consist of? And is there ongoing training once they have
completed the “Train the Trainer” programme? And how are they assessed? And then how is it determined who takes the programme? Is it all bus drivers?
Is it the entire Depart ment of Public Transportation?
How is the determination made?
We have got the Bermuda Tourism Authority
working diligently and very successfully in getting people to come to our Island, Mr. Speaker. And so,
we need to have a public transportation system t hat
can support our visitors, as well as our existing res idents. And we want a modern- day public transport ation system. And I do not think that that is too much to
ask for.
There are . . . the . . . let me see. Our bus
schedule should actually . . . we ne ed to have a ri dership survey. And I think that the Minister stated that
we would have that. Because we actually need to
know which areas are most popular, which buses
need to be in areas more frequently, what times they need to be there. I know in my cons tituency, up at
Lighthouse Lane, when they used to have the sightseeing buses, they used to go through there. But
there is not a bus that goes through there. And there
are a lot of seniors who live in that area. And they can
only catch the bus either on Mi ddle Road or on the
South Shore. And that is quite a walk from Lighthouse Lane. So, looking at adding in routes that will assist
seniors and other challenged people is a good thing.
And I am looking forward to seeing how they are g oing to do that.
In the transportation paper, the Minister talks
about a grey bus schedule. And I would like to know, exactly what the grey bus schedule is. What time are
those routes serviced? Which drivers are driving on
that schedule? And are they paid extra compensation
for driving that schedule? How is that incorporated
into the existing schedule? And why do we have a
need for a grey schedule? What does it accomplish?
There have been complaints; the paper addresses complaints about bus drivers. I would like to
know how those complaints are addressed. Are disc iplinary actions taken? Are courses required to be taken by bus drivers, depending on the infractions that
they have committed? And how do we train our bus
drivers to understand that they are providing a public service no t only in driving the bus, but also interacting
with our students, with our residents, and with our tourists?
Mr. Speaker, now I would like to move on to
the ferries, which are not under as much stress as the buses are. However, I would like to see more f erry
locations, and I think that a ferry (what do you call it?)
a terminal, a ferry terminal at the airport would actually
be ideal, particularly when we can have tourists who
are coming in and have their first experience with
Bermuda on a ferry taking them to the hotel or wher-ever it is that they might be going.
I note that there are . . . some of the ferries
can take bikes, and those ferries, I think, are the front -
loading ferries?

And so, they said that they are
not looking at procuring another front -loading ferry
because there is not enough volume of people. Ho wever, I think it is kind of a catch- 22. More people
would ride the ferry if they could bring their bikes. And
so, do you buy the ferry, and then more people use it?
Because I think that, you know, I used to be able to
catch the ferry. And I liked being able to catch the ferry into town. It actually gives you a wonderful start to the day, and it is calm and peaceful and beautiful. So, you know, if we could get another ferry that would allow people who have bikes, motorised bikes and bic ycles, to take them on the ferry, I think that would be a good thing.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to also address di fferently abled people. And I understand from the Transportation Green Paper that there are multiple
definitions in different pieces of legislation as to what
“differently abled” people means. And I would suggest
that we have a comprehensive definition for “ differently abled ” people. I agree that there are degrees of di sability. However, you know, challenges —we can find
an encompassing definition that addresses all cha llenges.
I was looking on the Internet, and looking at,
in the US, what are the states that are ranked number
one in terms of having wheelchair acces sibility? And
Seattle, Washington, is ranked number one of the top
five most wheelchair accessible cities in the United
States. And so, they have made accessibility to dis abled persons their priority. And so, they have got
wheelchair friendly ferries, wheelchair friendly taxis.
They have got wide ramps. And they have made themselves available for people who want to enjoy
their state to be able to enjoy it, whether they are
walking on two legs, whether they are rolling in a
wheelchair or . . . not the motori sed ones. —

[Inaudible interjection]

1762 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Ms. Leah K. Scott: What is the one with the three
wheels? The tri -chair, or whatever it is.
In New York City, Mr. Speaker, there is a pr ogramme that is called ADAPT. And ADAPT is a co mmunity network that is working t o empower disabled
people. And it is also about teaching the community
about the needs of disabled people. And they offer
programmes which include education, health, tec hnology and residential. And it is one of those things
that they actually provide support to other jurisdictions
that maybe the Minister would like to look into in terms of how we can provide greater support services for
our disabled people. And ADAPT is the leading h uman service not -for-profit organisation. And they have
been providing cutt ing-edge programmes and services for people with disabilities for a very long time.
And so, we need to be, as a country, more
inclusive of disabled people, not just in terms of trans-portation, but just generally. You know, I note that the
Minister said th at we were going to put up more signage at the buses and ferries. Will that signage include
Braille? Because signage is good for people who can
see, but for those who cannot see, you know, how are
they going to be accommodated? I think we need to
address t hat.
I was also very shocked to read in the paper,
Mr. Speaker, that a taxi can cost a disabled person up
to $200 for a return trip. And if you have got som ebody who is on a limited income having to pay $200 to get to a doctor’s visit or wherever they need to be, that
is ridiculous. And so, we need to find a way that is
more accommodating. We need to find a way that is
more user -friendly and more cost -friendly for our people who are differently abled. You know, it is almost
like they are being penalised for being differently
abled. And that is not what we want to be displayed
as. We should be an embracing community and accommodating the needs of all of our people, Mr.
Speaker.
Now, the paper identifies that there were 20
applications for minibus permits for people who wanted to import wheelchair accessible vans to the Island.
I would like to know what the status is of those per-mits. How long ago were the applications submitted?
How close are any of those applications to being approved? And although it will not fill the gap completely, I am glad that steps are being taken to accommodate
those who are differently abled.
And I notice that there is a proposal to have, I
guess, a sort of disability register to look at, to kind of
identify who is disabled in the country. And I am not
sure that that is the correct way to do things, because the register does not mean that everybody is going to
sign up. So, I am sure that there must be some other
ways to identify whom we are not reaching in terms of
support, whether it is with transportation or other
needs. But I am glad that differently abled people is a
category that is being considered in this paper. Mr. Speaker, I fully support any legislation that
would disable the use of the dark visor helmets. As
you are aware, a lot of the robberies and things that
have been taking place in the community have occurred by people who are wearing these helmets and these dark visors. And in order to address this, I think
we need to put in place the appropriate legislation. So,
I fully support that.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak now about
the taxis. And from my understanding, because I have
been in contact, in communication with several taxi drivers, my understanding is that since 2016, or even
before, they have been looking at trying to implement
a central dispatching system. So, up until 2017, I b elieve, or 2018, there were three dispatching compa-nies in Bermuda. And they were BTA Dispatching, CO
OP and Bermuda Island Taxi. And then, my infor-mation is that there was a moratoriu m on dispatching
licences granted and that there was actually someone
who was associated with one of the three companies
that I have just identified, who wanted to get a di spatching licence and was refused because he was
told there was a moratorium in plac e.
However, in May of 2018, HITCH was issued
a provisional licence with a full licence being issued in October 2018. So, the question posed to me is, When
was that moratorium lifted, and why were not other
taxi drivers informed of the lifting of the morat orium so
that other people could have had an opportunity to get
a dispatching licence?
Now, there was an article in the Royal G azette a couple of weeks back, written by a former, one
of the former presidents of one of the taxi dispatching companies. Their concern is that the Motor Car Act,
which governs taxis, is not being utilised effectively. And in the Motor Car Act, if you will allow me, Mr.
Speaker, section 35B is in relation to “Motors taxis to register with a taxi dispatching service.” So, anybody
who operates a taxi should be registered with a di spatching service.
But that is not what is happening, Mr. Speaker. A lot of taxis are being utilised by destination man-agement services. They are not going through the
dispatching service. And so, what the taxi drivers are
thinking is that if there is a central dispatch system,
then we can triage where taxis should be so we will
not have a glut of taxis in the West End, and St.
George’s and the central parishes are neglected.
The other thing is that HITCH has a meter on
their app that is —you know, you go through it on your
phone. And they have been issued a licence. And this
is my understanding, and I stand to be corrected by
the Premier, whom I know has an interest in HITCH.
But under the legislation, anybo dy who has a di spatching licence has to have a two- way radio set, a
mobile data terminal, a global positioning device and
an alarm device. And if you do not have those things, then you are in contravention of the Act and you
should not be able to have a di spatching licence.


Bermu da House of Assembly There are people who are operating without a
dispatching licence, and the legislation provides for a
$1,400 fine for the day on which the offence is committed and for each day during which the offence continues. And if the offence cont inues, then the permit
can be suspended by the board as for such time as
the board deems proper.
Mr. Speaker, all drivers should have a radio,
pursuant to the legislation. My understanding is that HITCH does not have a radio, that the drivers were
given a phone and that the directors are directed to
take their work from the app on the phone. And I do
not believe that we have seen legislation come forward in this House to amend the Motor Car Act to allow for apps to be used and to eliminate the use or the requirement for radios.
One of the companies, I think it is BTA, act ually employs 12 to 13 people. If we are going to resort
to taxis being dispatched by application, what is going
to happen to Bermudian jobs? Because if you are using a computer app, then there is really no need for people. So, we need to look at the things that we are
doing.
And while we want to be advanced in our
technology . . . and I get it. And I did go on the news
and say that we should consider using either an Uber -
or a Lyft -type s ervice. However, having spoken with
taxi drivers and gained a better understanding of the damage that such a service in Bermuda would cause,
I am going to backpedal on that and say, well, we
need to actually look at the fundamental issues of the
taxi indus try that we have now. We need to look at the
legislation and , where the legislation is being violated,
[enforce] the enforcement procedures.
I believe that the Transport Control Depar tment does have a transport enforcement officer who
should be out there patrolling and policing people.
And where people are violating the Motor Car Act,
then whatever consequences are provided by the legislation should be instituted.
0I think that we have had a two- edged sword
with the road sobriety legislation in that people are no
longer going out. And while I believe that the road s obriety legislation is a good thing— people should not
be drinking and driving— the challenge is that people
are not going out because they are not able to get reliable transportation to get to and from their destination. And so, it would be interesting to see whether
any data have been compiled since the time that road
sobriety legislation has been implemented and what
the revenue impact has been on bars and restaurants
in terms of people not going out anymore.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister announced a couple
of weeks ago that they were looking at possibly iss uing 20 special licences. And I think he does have the ability to issue, I think it is 87 or 88. But he thought that he would start with a sample of 20 for a temporary period and see where that would go. And the
concern with that, Mr. Speaker, is that taxi drivers who have paid $125,000 to $150,000 for a taxi licence are
afraid that their investment is going to be devalued.
And I think I would not be happy if I were a taxi driver
and somebody could get a licence for $2,000, and I
paid $150,000 for mine. You know?
And the truth is, Mr. Speaker, the taxi licences
for some people are like deeds. They are used as co llateral at the bank to send their chi ldren to college.
And you cannot send your child to college for a
$2,000 licence. So, I think that we need to assess
that.
And I think the other thing is that, currently, I
believe that there are . . . and my numbers may be
wrong, again. I have been worki ng with some me mbers in the industry. But currently, we have 600 taxi
permits which have been issued. And out of those
[600], about 50 to 100 vehicles are not on the road. So, what are we doing about those people who have
taxi licences who are not on the r oad? Before we say
we are going to issue 20 special permits, let us look at why those 50 or 100 are not on the road. And I think
that the Public Service Vehicle Licensing Board should address those taxi drivers. Why are they not
on the road? And if they ar e not going to be on the
road and utilising their taxis, then they either need to
forfeit their licence or sell their licence.
But before we add anything to what already
exists, we need to address the challenges that we are already facing and see if we can find solutions within
the existing industry.
My understanding with the announcement
was that there were going to be 20 special licences
and the cost of those licences was going to be b etween $2,000 and $4,000, the banks are looking at re-evaluating what value the permits really have. And so,
we have got to be able to allow people to retain the
value of their investment. And we need to look at
ways of getting taxis on the road, getting and provi ding superior service to our people without detriment to
the industry, to those who have worked hard to secure
their taxis and to those who are working hard to pr ovide service to Bermuda.
Now, Mr. Speaker, it was brought to my attention by a taxi driver (as I drop all of my papers on the floor) that, in the Motor [ Taxi] Regulations, under
Schedule 1, there is a Rate 3— Surcharge. And that
surcharge comes into play during public holidays. And
the rate surcharge is that for anybody who is getting a
taxi between the hours of midnight and 6:00 [am],
there is a surcharge of 25 per cent of the total charge
otherwise payable under Rate 1. And this has to occur at a public holiday, and the taxi has to carry up to four
passengers.
And Schedule 1, Rate 3— Surcharge, section
B says, “Where any part of the hiring —1 occurs between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m. and the
taxi carries 5 to 7 passengers; or 2 occurs on a public
holiday and the taxi carries 5 to 7 passengers,” that is
1764 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly 50 per cent of the total charge otherwise payable u nder Rate 1.
Now, one of the taxi drivers sent me a notice
from HITCH that was notifying members that the steps
to our holiday rates would be in effect for Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which again, as I stated, repr esents a 25 per cent increase on fares for up to four
passengers, and 50 per cent for five to seven passengers. But my understanding and information is that on
top of those 25 [per cent] and 50 per cent surcharges,
that HITCH also charges an additional 12 per cent
charge, which is higher than what the other taxi dri vers are charging. So, Mr. Speaker, that cannot be
right or fair for people who are trying to drive a taxi
and make a decent living and are unable to do so.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I have been provided
with some correspondence from the licence dispatch companies with their concerns about the industry. And
they have actually laid out all of their concerns. I think
that this was provided to the Minister, and I was pr ovided with a copy, as well. And the licence dispatch
companies are very concerned about the industry.
They are very concerned that a central dispatching
system is not going to occur. And they want to know
what can be done to address this and many other i ssues.
And they have got some good solutions here.
And so, I do know that the Minister, my understanding
is that the M inister was provided with this correspondence about a month ago, and the taxi drivers have not
yet had a reply. But they have set out their concerns.
They are very legitimate concerns. And they have also
provided suggested actions and solutions.
And I thi nk, Mr. Speaker, that the people who
are actually working in the industry and providing this
service, performing the day -to-day job of being taxi
drivers, are actually the best people to discuss the areas of concern, and to provide the solutions, because i t is what they actually do. So, I am hoping that
the Minister will take into account the suggestions and find a way to provide a taxi service that is going to be
beneficial for both the taxi drivers and the people of
Bermuda, our visitors and our residents .
Mr. Speaker, in addition, under the taxi reg ulations, taxi drivers have to have a code of dress. Yes,
a “Dress and conduct section” [section 12]. And so, one of the things that was raised and brought to my
attention was that the regulations may be a bit discriminatory for men. And under section 12(a)(v), it
says, “dress shoes, boots or moccasin shoes shall be
worn, but not leisure shoes, sneakers or foot coverings likely to cause the driver to lose control of the taxi, such as flip flops, clogs or sandal s.” And so,
there are women taxi drivers who wear sandals, and
the men cannot wear sandals. And so, they are di sturbed that they are being discriminated against.
In general, as I look at the dress and conduct,
there are quite a few rules that actually are not followed. There are not any consequences for not follo w-ing them, but, you know, there is a dress and conduct
[regulation] that should adhere to all taxi drivers. And
again, it is just something that should be looked at and
enforced because it is in keeping with the regulations
and the legislation.
Mr. Speaker, the other thing is that the taxi
drivers would also like to have the ability to accept
credit cards. I know that some of them do not. And
with the modern traveller these days, Mr. Speaker, I
know when I travel, if you are going to New York or
Miami or any of those places, they have that little tax icab machine [sitting] in the back. And you can pick
whether or not you want to pay a tip. And it will print a
receipt for you.
And so, I know that there is also a charge associated with having a credit card service. You have
got to pay the bank a fee for having those, the m achine and the processing. And so, yes, it will cut into
sort of the revenue of the taxi drivers. But, you know,
in essence, it is t he cost of doing business. And it is a
cost that if we want to be a competitive jurisdiction or
remain a competitive jurisdiction, we may have to i ncur. But it may be something that, you know, the Government could consider buying the machines and sel ling them to the taxi drivers at a discounted rate so that
they could have them in their taxis.
I think that covers all of the things that I was
going to talk about, Mr. Speaker. I think that some
other Members of my team are going to address the
paper. General ly, I am very glad to see that we have a
Green Paper. I am a bit disappointed that it is not going to be a White Paper, because I think a White P aper kind of enshrines what the Green Paper sets out
and it also provides a form of accountability. Because
you put it in a White Paper, you said you are going to
do these things, and, you know, the thing with having
a Green Paper is, Well, we can pick, choose and r efuse the things that we are or are not going to do.
But again, as I said, overall, I think that it is a
good step forward. I hope that we can get the transportation issues that we currently have resolved. We
have got the PGA coming up, and I am sure that the
Minister would like to ensure that there is sufficient
and viable transportation for the people who are visi ting our Island. We also want to make sure that the
bus drivers are working in a safe environment and that
when they have to go to [different] places to [use] the
restroom, that the restrooms are safe, and that they
are clean, that they are hygienic, and that we are all
working to better Bermuda and our public transport ation and our tourism industry, because they go hand in
hand. So, thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Good afternoon.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this
Green Paper on Transportation. I thank the Minister for bringing it here. I want to thank Ms. Stacey Evans,
who I know has done a great deal of work in the pre paration, and the team from the Ministry of Transport who have been involved in this process. I single her out because, on one of the boards that I serve, she
actually took some time out to meet specifically with
us to share with us what was taking place and to get
feedback, and that was greatly appreciated.
Mr. Speaker, I will declare my interests. I am a
frequent user of the public transportation system, and I carry my card not because I have reached the age,
although I am fast approaching; I carry my card as
one who would go down to (or my wife, more fr equen tly than I) and buy that three- month package,
which makes it far more economical . And dare I say
that we have long boasted on having a very good public transportation system in Bermuda? The Island runs
east to west, a mile and a half at its widest portion,
runs from the east, where the sun rises and decides
that it is going to park. T hat is the way the Island tra vels. We go with the flow of nature. And the Cup will go
that way this year as it is supposed to.

[Inaudible interjections and laughter ]

But I digress there, Mr.
Speaker, because I only have 30 minutes on an i mportant topic.
Transportation reflects very much the social
makeup of any society. And in university, in addition to
playing a lot of golf, I majored in social science, as
well, and spent a great deal of time in different c ommunities where transportation is handled in different
manners. And for many years, we prided ourselves on our transportation system. Recently, transportation
has been something that has come under the proverbial microscope.
And let me point, because it is easy to point
fingers. And I just want to single out Mr. Herman
Basden, who was in his role for many years as Director of PTB [Public Transportation Board], my next -
door neighbour for many years before he took ill. And I just want to say that he often e mphasised to me the
importance of transportation economics, which he
studied at the London University. He was very proud
of that and very proud of his time there and the rel ationship that he had fostered with those who operated
under him at PTB. And my ass ociation through ru nning a government quango for some eight years be-fore working as a private contractor allowed me to come in close contact with some others who have
been at TCD [Transport Control Department], like Mr.
Tyrrell and Mr. Oliver, Stan Oliver, who later went on
to be Permanent Secretary and then headed the civil service.
And so, many experiences have allowed me,
and interactions with some key people who helped to
develop our transportation industry along the way
have allowed me to garner a lit tle bit of a perspective
as a dear country boy.
But when I look at this report, the numbers
that allowed me to appreciate the dynamics that have
shifted in Bermuda are that in 1999 Bermuda had
355,000 visitors by air. Now, I dare say that this report
does not go into air transportation to the depth that it
deals with other aspects of it. And I am sure that the Honourable Whip, my colleague, will speak more suc-cinctly to that. I will say just one point as it delves into
the air transportation, is that one of the things that a lways stood out to me is the compaction, if I can use that word, of air arrivals and departures in Bermuda.
Now, we know we have got a nice, big airport
coming. But we do not have greater flights coming to accommodate it , but compaction in that. So, you have
compaction in arrivals, and then you are expected to
have people there to cater to that in a transportation
way. I will leave it there —355,000 arrivals in 1999,
and 282[,000] air visitors in 2018, so a decrease. That
was a time when Bermuda was more hotel heads -inbeds centred. There was a shift away from that for a
number of reasons, no fault being pointed.
I remember seeing the exodus away from hotel properties and our little niche boutique places that
now form condominiums. You can go start in the west
and work your way down to the east if that suits your fancy. I will start from the east and work my way back
up. Thankfully, the St. George’s Club is still around.
But even that has shifted a little bit to more residential
to be ab le to survive.
But what happened on the other side of the
hotel dynamic? In 1999, we had 195,000 visitors coming to Bermuda by sea. And those visitors, I know b ecause in 1999 I could sit on the first tee at St.
George’s and look down and see the Bermuda Star,
right there at Ordinance Island. And Royal Caribbean
line was just below Harbour Radio, two cruise ships at
the same time, dual -ship policy one of them may have
had, Hamilton and St. George’s intertwined. But what
was the common denominator? A cruise ship from
going back to the Ocean Monarch and the days of . . .
well, the Ocean Monarch and the Queen of Bermuda
(thank you, Honourable and Learned Member), the Queen of Bermuda. A boat would leave on a Saturday
from New York and be in Bermuda on a Monday, and
leave on a Thursday and be back in New York on a
Saturday, and be in Bermuda on a Monday. Another
boat would leave Boston on a Sunday, be in Bermuda on a Tuesday, leave Bermuda on a Friday and be
1766 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly back. And that was their rotation —four days in Bermuda.
I remember my dear friend, whom I used to
have lunch with often, my dear friend, Jimmy Williams,
who had the Pub on the Square during the glory days of tourism. He said to me w hen I first came to St.
George’s to open up that golf course in 1985, he said
to me, My clientele, Kim, is the cruise. I am their home
for four days. And anybody who travels on a cruise
ship regularly will say to me that the crew are their
source of where the locals would eat. So, the Pub on the Square would be a local haunt, and it would also
be the local spot for the cruise ship crew, who are
coming to and from Bermuda on a regular basis. And
it would be the place where the regulars on the cruise ship were gravitating because they know, those folks
know where the best deals are.
Those were the days when the cruise ship
people would come out of the cruise ship, and venture
around and the like. I remember that because I saw
the ship when cruise ships then became, Mr. Speaker, concessioned- out entities. And my own rental golf
clubs, I had to come in competition with them because
they were then figuring out who was making money
on land.
I fast forward in the little bit of time that I have
to 2018, where Bermuda now has 484 [sic] cruise ship
visitors.

[Yes,] 484,000. That is
484 with three zeroes. Not even HOTT 107.5 with two
T’s. That is three zeroes in the back of that 484. That
is a lot of zeroes. That is a lot of people to have to
manage.
Now, let us cross reference that. Let us cross
reference that to the number of taxis that we have in Bermuda. There were 600 taxis in 1999; there were
556 taxis in 2018. Minibuses, there were seven, I believe. (I am looking for it here, but I know I read it already.) Seven in 1999. I remember that. I remember
that seven was in St. George’s, servicing St. George’s Club and the beach, which is now called Blackbeard’s
and back . Now we have 147 minibuses. Thankfully,
we do.
But let us look at that dynamic. If Bermuda
has transitioned from having tota l visitors from
550,000 visitors in 1999 to 771,000 visitors in 2018,
and the number of taxis has decreased and the minibuses have increased only [slightly], the question is,
Have we kept pace with that shifting social dynamic? It is a social dynamic. And I know social dynamics do
not get the attention of a government like financial
ones do. That is a fact. I have lived long enough to
know that this is a fact of life that I will have to live with. But as a person who wears social issues on their
sleeve, I am duty -bound to speak to this social d ynamic that is in front of us here right there. I read in here, and I cannot find the page right
now, but I will find it as I shift through , when I come to
it, that said that taxis are expensive. Let me tell you somet hing. Taxi drivers, just like any other business
person, has all the responsibilities of costs of health
insurance, payroll taxes, and all the like. Okay? And
except for some reductions that I see posted, 5 per
cent, [taxi drivers] pay the same fuel cost t hat we pay
and have an increased burden on them. And that is an important dynamic that we have to take into consideration.
Mr. Speaker, how come that clock keeps tic king away? I mean, time and tide wait for no man, as
my grandfather used to say.

I am going. I am going.
Mr. Speaker, the senior population in Berm uda and the group of persons approaching the senior
population in Bermuda are the fastest -growing segment of our society. And that presents a different d ynamic for Bermuda to consider. In the Green Paper,
on page 19, it tells us just that. Age 45 to 64 has
grown from 12,000 people (rounding it down) to
20,000. That is a significant increase. Sixty -five and
over has grown from 6,700 to almost 11,000. I will
round it up a little bit. That is a significant growth that is going to impact a number of things, transportation
notwithstanding.
I want to say this, that when you look at the
income versus expenditure of public transportation,
rightfully so, it is a subsidised area. I do not have any
issues with that, historically. But what we do have to
grapple with is the here and now. If you tell me that
we have in the here and now some 700,000 visitors —
771,000, almost 800,000 visitors —to cater to versus
550,000 visitors to cater to in 1999, and you have
fewer taxi es than you did then, more people, fewer
providers, Houston, we have a problem here. A ser ious one!
And in the here and now, we have a nice
problem in the fact that we got more visitors to have to
address. So, that is a poor country! Every week, you hear people trying to tickle up the Government and
find all the faults. The Government has created a nice
problem to have to solve!
And let me digress to say that the creation of
that problem came with great criticism even from the
person who stands here speaking today, because many of us have had a field day on the cruise ship,
the big port over in Dockyard. But thankfully, I see it
every day when I am out at Port Royal, that wonderful
place that is hosting the Bermuda challenge (Thank
you very much for that). But I see it in minibuses going
by. Last week I spoke about the opportunities with our ports. It did not get any coverage in the paper. That is
understandabl e. I understand that! I do not expect


Bermu da House of Assembly what I say to be covered by the daily, even if it makes
sense!
That is the problem we have in this country
when it comes to people who really passionately u nderstand issues, and there is a partisan approach to
how the y are covered! It is a problem. Because some
of us, some of us actually live tourism. The Honour able Member sells gas, so he understands the tourism
dynamic and the transportation dynamic.

[Inaudible interjections]

No, I am just saying. It is
important to look at the social dynamics at play. And
we have cultural problems as it comes to transport ation. I remember back when in 1979 when I was at
Davis, California, for the NCAA Championship, and I
remember the University of California, Davis. You talk
about progressive thinking. They had pedestrian . . .
not pedestrian, they had pedal -bike-only campus for
the whole university. But you know out West they are
way ahead when it comes to things like being laid
back. The world catches up later as a consequence.
In a small society like Bermuda, we have got
to look at that. Because the flip side of that that the Minister of Health speaks about is that those of us
who are not walking the way we used to or should be now, we need to create a culture by virtue of our challenges that encourages greater use of pedal bikes
and the like, a walking community and the like.
Now, let me say this when it comes to the bus
problem that we are faced with for an immediate con-sideration, as we consider this Green Paper. I was
most pleased to see some thought being given to the
challenges that communities such as St. David’s face.
Let me say that it is not just St. David’s. Ferry Reach
and Cut Road experience those same problems. Ord Road and Spanish Point experience those same problems. Pond Hill and, dare I say, Sound View Road
experience those same problems.
The day has come when Barnes Corner, the
new Barnes Corner needs to be Rockaway Port Ro yal! Think about it! You have got a bus running up the south, you have got a bus running up there. And you
have got a major facility that the Government is going
to invest millions to promote to the world. And a cruise
terminal that can be a major link, and the public sy stem has not linked up to it yet. We need to do that!
And guess where a large percentage of seniors live.
Right there in the Honourable Member from constit uency . . . w ho sits in front of this constituency, so I am
sure he is in agreement with me, he might even elabo-rate far more than my time permits. The Speaker: Looks like you are seeking support.

[Laughter]

Trying to get 10 on the clock. Well,
mine is started, how is that? Mr. Hubert (Kim) E. Swan: I will continue on the
[Transport] Green Pap er.
Let me start off, Mr. Speaker , the Green P aper states that taxis are expensive. But it is my contention that the operating costs of a taxi have i ncreased exponentially and outpaced any fare increases that have occurred over the years. And I would ask [for] an undertaking [to] consider the cost of operating
a taxi in 2019—all the costs that go along with it —
against the fare increases that have come over time so that we can have a fact -based discussion about the
situation. The number of taxis has decreas ed from
1999 to 2019 while the total visitors have increased
significantly.
The shift has been, Mr. Speaker , from hotel
and guest house visitors, who, I might add, spend
considerably more than a cruise visitor . . . not negating the importance and signific ance of cruise visitors
who are here in great numbers these days, but as that
dynamic shifted before our very eyes over 20 years,
so have the circumstances that service providers for
the public. Their dynamics have changed. And so certainly we must undertake to track the passage of vis itors and locals.
When we look at transportation, you know, the
times and days, the bottlenecks . . . I can give you an
example, Mr. Speaker . Since 1999, Dockyard is a m ajor transportation hub, located at the very western ex-treme of Bermuda. Therein lies hundreds of thousands of visitors who need to be traversed throughout
Bermuda. And dare I say that we need, scientifically
. . . because in my discussion with transportation engineers . . . I told you, Mr. Speaker , I spoke to a great
deal of them in my life for the last 20 years, scientific and matter -of-fact evidence is very much a part of the
persons who held those particular posts.
In my emergence . . . in fact, the ones that I
named . . . I named Mr . Raul Tyrrell , Mr. Stan Oliver
and Mr. Herman Basden, three people I spent hours
around a great deal through my holding of the government post as a general manager of a quango for
some eight years. They always spoke of things from
an engineering point of view. They looked at life more
scientifically because they . . . I think some of them
may have been even tech boys, for the benefit of the
Colonel, the Member for Works and Engineering, Mr.
Oliver was a Berkeleyite—

[Inaudible interjection]

And golfers, indeed. But I want to say that science has a lot to do
with it. So if hundreds of thousands of people are in
Dockyard, the composition of the Island, the layout of
the Island, being configured [like] a fishhook, we need
to make sure . . . we need to say, Well, is it humanly
possible to expect all of our people to be there to cater
to that 400,000 or so people, or should we be finding
ways to transport people to other important significant
hubs?
St. George’s would be a natural hub because
it is a very impo rtant part of Bermuda’s tourism equation. From my point of view it is the most important
part, it is where it all started, and so we need to make
sure those people in Dockyard are in St. George’s —
soon and often and long!
Hamilton is an important part of t hat. The w ater will play a significant portion of making sure that
we do not rely on all of the vehicles that can be hampered by an accident on the road to move masses of
people.
My uncle . . . I go back to the old- timers that
taught me who are over 100 ye ars old. [My uncle]
talked about herding cattle, why? We grew up in an
agrarian society. We can see how you moved the cattle from up on the top of Cedar Hill, Southampton (for
those of you who do not know there is a Cedar Hill,
Southampton) and got them down through the local
corral to be able to put them in the areas. That is what it is like. If you do not look . . . that is what we need to
do.
And so I feel, Mr. Speaker , it is important and
I will be prevailing upon the Minister, my colleague, as best I c an, knowing that the challenge is on us as we
speak and knowing that the cruise ships [operate] di fferently than they did 20 years ago. Because, as I
mentioned, cruise ships try to spend as much time at
sea—they are bigger, they [are like] cities —and they
are trying to get that dollar out of those persons poc kets for their services on board their ship to the detr iment of . . . and our goal is to get them on land and
get persons spending money. And that is a major
challenge.
The Green Paper suggests using pr ivate services in light of the transportation challenges. And I
would like to know if the Ministry is looking at the pos-sibility of developing community transportation services. I mentioned St. George’s, St. David’s, Ferry
Reach . . . and I would say that we could very much
be a pilot service. There are greater numbers of people in those areas than there were in 1999 and the
like, and if we can find ways to utilise our community -
based areas to provide a fee- to-service during the
peak travel periods of those persons . . . the most i mportant times would be going to work and coming home from work.
And let me say this, Mr. Speaker , because I
know my time is nearly running out, times have changed. As a commuter, you cannot tell me I can get
a 6:15 bus, because I have got to make time out of St.


Bermu da House of Assembly George’s on a Friday, but I cannot have that same
option on a Saturday and Sunday, not when you tell
me that the hotel is going to be open and they need
me, not when you tell me I have got to be at the gr ocery store where I work . . . and the [number] of people in this country paying $25 to go to work to make $15 an hour is . . . you know, that bit of economics, to
me, does not make sense. That is something we have
to look at for our working- class community.
Mr. Speaker , technology must become co mmonplace in Bermuda when it comes to transport ation. So I hear people talking about, you know, Bermuda is more computer literate than most places
around the world. My mother is probably listening to
us right now, at her age, with her iPad, to get us
online. So persons can certainly have the opportunity
to learn how to use their phone to be able to buy their
bus passes. And our busses need to be like they are
in Japan and other communities, where they . . .
where the electronics are di recting the traffic to take
away from some of the experiences that our bus dri vers have to put up with within the community.
Mr. Speaker , transportation speaks to the s ocial conditions of our country, and I am one that is
supportive of the fact that transportation of public service is subsidised, but it must be—

Thank you for your contribution.
I now recognise the next Member, and I b elieve it is the Member from constituency 12.
Opposition Leader, you have your 30 minutes.

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker , and good afternoon to everyone after lunch.
I would like to say from the onset that this
Green Paper provided us with, actually, some very
good reading. It is rather lengthy. I believe it is 190plus pages.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: However, it is not difficult
reading, but it is very informative in the scope that it
has taken to get to this House and to the larger Ber-muda what this Government believes is t he direction
that we need to go in.
What I will say is this, Mr. Speaker , from the
onset, however, that I believe that this Government should show the people of Bermuda a commitment, through a White Paper, that it will do specific things. A
Green Paper is perfectly fine. I believe that as they go
further with their reviews of things, I believe that there
are other institutions still, to this day, that have not
been talked to in specific, that are in the industry, that
will, of course, reveal many opportuni ties that I think
need to be included.
And so I say this to let the Minister know . . . I
know he has said no to a White Paper, but a White Paper, essentially, would give a commitment to Bermuda of specifics that we will go after. And, certainly,
we know with transportation it is something that is fluid
as we upgrade things. It will continue to be fluid with
technology changing all of the time and with many of
the variables that are involved with transportation in
Bermuda—from the coordinating of the buses to the
coordinating of our cruise ships, to the coordinating of
WEDCO and the activity that goes on just within that
area, the coordination of what happens in the City of
Hamilton, when, in fact, a ferry drops off people and
how easy it is for them to be able to get onto a bus
and to have alternatives, whether it be tourists or Bermudians, to have options to be able to get about on the Island.
And so there is much to be praised about this
Green Paper, in fact. Certainly this is not an intent to try and put any shadow on this here, but I do believe that we already are aware, as we have gone through
this Green Paper, of many of the things that could a lready have been done, things that can be done right now. And so I think the public will be looking for a
commitment of the things that we can do right now to
ensure that we can bring about better service.
Now, at the bottom of page 9 our Honourable
Minister mentions . . . the last thing that he says is
“Bermuda’s modern transport future begins now.” It is
a ver y catchy phrase. And I like that, certainly with the
inclusion of talking about where we are going to be
bringing in technology and the likes. But the future of
transportation has been in place for some time now. We have seen the advent of the Twizy, which is in this
paper, and the small electric cars. So we have been
reinventing ourselves, maybe not at a pace that we
would like to, but now that we have a Green Paper in
front of us it would behove us to hasten the pace because now we have got solid informat ion in front of us
which can lead us to some real conclusions.
And if you walk along the street right now, if
you were to ask a taxi driver (just talking about the taxi part of this Transport [Green Paper]), if you were to
ask any one of the drivers, which I have done on a
regular basis since this Green Paper, the first thing
that comes out of their mouths is, Listen, we’ve got
things that we should be enforcing right now . And we
1770 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly know that we have challenges with that there, and
maybe manpower. I do not know what all of those
challenges are, but certainly with this Green Paper
and with more discussions that I hope will happen, it
will highlight what those issues are of enforcement and let us get down to enforcing these things.
I do not know about you, Mr. S peaker , but I
am tired of coming into town and seeing guys popping wheelies all through town, which is a real safety and
health hazard to all of us, whether it be motorists or
whether it be pedestrians who are crossing the street or just moving about . . . our tourists who are coming
here who are flooding the streets. This is a serious
problem.
I do not know about you, Mr. Speaker , but I
am tired of seeing people driving through red lights —
purposely ignoring the red lights!

Yes.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: We put them in place for
safety reasons and we, as a people—not the tourists,
we as a people— are ignoring the fundamental laws of
the land. So we have got to go a long way in enforcing
that safety for everyone in Bermuda as we start looking at this very, very, very comprehensive report that
we have in front of us.
I do believe that there is more to come. And I
am hoping that as they sit down and start talking to
some of the dispatchers and the likes . . . I heard a
former Member say that those discussions still had
not been had entirely, so I am sure that there is more
to come to light. And I am hoping that as we learn some of these new things and some of these new
revelations about transportation, that the Minister will
have the opportunity to bring statements to this House
to update us as they move along with some of these
recommendations that are here.
I would like to highlight, Mr. Speaker , I take
note that as I was going through this comprehensive
report many of the things that they talk about are already completed, which is great. It was great to be
able to see that this was added in here and to be able to also see that there were ongoing things that they
are working on. And so I believe that this truly is a
work in progress.
And so what w e would like to hear as we are
moving through this process of progress in transport ation is that we will hear more and more about some of the things that are forthcoming. I mean, certainly,
when we were Government we understood the cha llenges that people h ad with the Twizys. But you can
see in the graphs . . . and I am going to go through
this particular paper to show where Bermudians are
now saying, Well, hold on a second here. We want to
be fossil fuel conscious as well. We would like to buy
these things and travel in these things. And I have
heard many times before in the past . . . many people have said that Bermuda is a perfect test tube for going—

Mm-hmm.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: —without being regenerated.
So technology is certainly catching . . . well,
not catching up. Technology is certainly pushing us
forward and we do need to advantage of many of
these new and innovative things that are happening out there in the world. And we have a great opportun ity because it is not . . . you know, with 60,000 people
on the Island it is small enough that we can make some drastic changes very quickly. And s o I would
encourage the Minister . . . you know, we sometimes
tease him, he has got a lot of energy, to push forward with some of these things, to get going.
But I believe that a commitment must be
made to the people of Bermuda. It would have been
nice if he would have committed to a White Paper —
that is not the case. So we will hold this Ministry to the
task of ensuring that many of the things that we see in
here are going to be implemented and that they do
come up with something that is more targeted to ge tting things done.
We have seen way too many times that we
get all of these papers in front of us and recommendations and we go through them —great recommendations, you know. I must say the civil servants get going
and get all of this stuff and get all hy ped-up and then it
takes two years before we even get to one or two of
them . . . bureaucracy sets in place.
And so, if we are going to talk about moving
forward I believe that we can. The Government has our participation in this and our support. We believ e
that we do have major, major issues in Bermuda, going through this report, with transportation. Which
leads me to say, I was just listening to the Honourable
Member that just sat down from constituency 2 and
how he was talking about the cruise ships and the
likes. And I just want to say this here that, you know,


Bermu da House of Assembly cruise ships . . . you know, they . . . the place to make
money from cruise ships is not retail for trinkets and
things like that. The place to make money from cruise
ships is transportation. They want to see stuff. The
last thing they want to do is buy something —
everything is on the boat! They want to be able to get
to see things and so this is a huge economic opportunity.
And what you saw with the increase of cruise
ships up in Dockyard was the proliferation of minibuses. And the challenges that the bus service was ha ving, you know, being able to do tours and maint enance and the likes, we recognise that these guys stepped up to the plate and I can tell you, I set off the
other day across from Hor seshoe Bay . . . I cannot
remember the name of that restaurant, what is that
restaurant across from Horseshoe Bay?

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Yes, yes, I am from St.
David’s, I cannot remember the name of that place.
Right, Gulfstr eam?

Gulfstream.

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Gulfstream, and I had a
nice meal there. My goodness, the number of minibuses that rolled out of that thing . . . it was incredible!
I did not realise we had that many. I mean, to be
frank, I felt like it was dozens of them. Huh?
[Inaudible interjections ]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Yes, yes, yes. My brother -
in-law works at Rangers, yes. I was sitting there too,
making sure it stayed safe. And I mean just these mi nibuses that were coming out and the y were loaded
down.
And now, as we go through this paper here,
this Green Paper, I realise that we have got even more scope to expand on that. I was talking yesterday
to a gentleman who does tours and he does these tours on his own, he just takes two or three people, he
is licensed to do it, and he uses his vehicle to go
about doing these tours, and this guy cannot keep up.
I said, Well, why don’t you go ahead . . . why don’t you
get like a minivan? You know what I mean? You get
licensed and get all that ot her stuff done. And he did
not want to go that far. He was very comfortable. He
was making his money off of just these couple of
tours.
And so, you know, Bermudians are true ambassadors of a place that they love and what a great
opportunity —economic oppor tunity —we have. We
have to take advantage of that. I mean a whole part of
when we were Government and getting cruise ships
down into St. George’s, it was not all about the tri nkets to buy, it was about getting tours. And maybe we should have been clearer about that there, but it was
about getting tours going down in St. George’s
through our National Heritage Site.
And so, again, I go back to the fact that when
the Honourable Minister closes off by saying “Berm uda’s modern transport future begins now” I recognise
a bit of politicking there, he is trying to take credit for
the modernisation of transport . . . future begins with
transport now. But it has been going on. Like I said,
the Twizys are a hit —the little minicars. Those things
are a hit. And half the t ime, it is tourists. If you see 10
go by, 5 of them have got tourists and the other 5 of them have got Bermudians who rented them out just
to jam up and down and to enjoy this new technology.
So we need to take advantage of that.
And one of the things that , as I went through
this, you know, I learned it from the America’s Cup while I was Minister of Public Works, that the coord ination of moving people is a real . . . how should I say
it? . . . science.

Mm-hmm.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: I mean it is a real science.
And we are seeing far too often that we are not appl ying the science to this, and we are hearing all of the
issues that are happening up at Dockyard that we
know we need relief for and that we hear down at the airport . . . we have got challenges with people just
being able to get a taxi out of the airport. And then we
have got challenges leaving town. You know, you
have had a few drinks, we have got sobriety testing going on, and you cannot get a taxi.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. L. C raig Cannonier: And so we have got to find
a way, as we have gone through this paper, of ensuring that we have somehow, not necessarily a central place where all this information is going from, but ensuring that all of the separate entities that are out
there, that are involved with transportation, can communicate through the Ministry to allow for us to have
somewhat —maybe it is not completely, but som ewhat —of a seamless transition that information is being passed back and forth so that we can get to the destination of having a system that moves our Bermudians and moves our tourists throughout the Island
without, or with as little, complication as possible.
As I read through the Green Paper I recognised that we had issues and some of the issues about the buses was, you know, they are going too
fast and you know we have got trees overgrowing and
the likes, that is something that we can do . . . we can
do something about that now. We can go to the
homeowners now. And I know that some of these
things may be in place because, certainly, we were addressing it when we were Government.
1772 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly But I guess I wanted to hear a little more, and
I had not quite heard it yet and hopefully it will come at
some point in time, about exactly what we are recommending when it comes to streamlining this whole
process to ensure that we are moving people back and forth. I mean, my brother from constituency 2, he
has every right to be concerned. I am concerned
about St. David’s islanders who have, always,
throughout our history, been the last ones to get this
and the last ones to get that.
I believe in this Honourable House a couple of
years ago I got up and spoke to the issue of us [being] the last ones to get paved roads, the last ones to get
electricity out there. You know it would be ni ce if some
priority were given —and I know it is a sacrifice—to
ensure that people can get back and forth. Pequots
like to travel too!

[Laughter and i naudible interjection]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: You know, after having
that landfill done in 1940, which was the greatest landfill ever done in Bermuda, so that we could have a
causeway so that we could connect St. David’s to the
so-called “mainland” we need to do something. And
we know that we have challenges with our bridges
there—far too long it has been— and we need to sort
out some of these challenges, but I believe, with this,
we are on our way.
And the encouragement from me is to say let
us move with some swiftness. So with that, Mr. Speaker , I am going to move through some of the
pages here because I di d want to highlight some
things that I . . . some I took exception with, and most
of it I most certainly . . . as I said, I really enjoyed this
read. I learned a lot actually about our transportation.
So it is a bit lengthy, but it was very good.
On page 10 I take note where it talks about
. . . and I was a bit confused about this here, it says
“the Government is investigating the effic acy of moving to electric buses.” I get that. I understand that this makes sense. And “D uring this time, the intention is t o
gather ridership information . . . .” I am a bit confused
about the ridership information. I mean, we have been
gathering that information for years, and we haven’t? I
mean, I need to know from the . . . I am looking at the
technical officers over there. We have been gathering
this information for a long time. I mean, is that not how
we came up with the new schedule . . . because of
this ridership information?
So I am still wondering how much information
we need in order for us to do something. We have got
the information already. That is why we have some
buses not going to certain areas, like St. David’s, at
certain times because we got the ridership information. So, as I listen to this guy on Instagram . . . he
says, I was behoved. What behoved me was t hat . . .
we have already got the information, so why are we going to collect it now? I hope that is not a significant stalling tactic, but I do not believe that that is the case,
but I would like for the technical officers to certainly
take a look at that .
What I will say is, over on page 11, I was quite
excited about the fact that, in terms of student trans-portation, it mentions that . . . and I will read it here,
the very first paragraph, that “ A significant percentage
of Bermuda’s middle school and seni or school st udents use the bus regularly and would benefit from
having a dedicated school bus ser vice.”
I would venture to say even in primary schools
as well, but middle school and senior school. You
know, we have seen this around the world. If you
trave l you know there are dedicated buses for st udents. This, of course, is a completely different approach to how we pick up and drop off our young
people, but certainly with the revelations of the past and the bullying and the likes that go on, it would be
nice to see that we do have some form of service that
is dedicated. So I like that suggestion. I really do think it makes sense.
I will declare my interest that many years ago
I realised that our young kids, those who were just starting to go to school from preschool, I started a
service called Little Tykes Service, and it is still out
there today, owned by a friend of mine who I sold it to
after a few years. And my goodness, what a brilliant
opportunity . . . as in the paper here, it suggests that,
you know, a lot of times it is not safe for kids getting
off the bus to cross the street. There are no sidewalks
and the likes. And it is a real safety hazard . . . a risk
for our young people just trying to get to school. And
one of the beauties of the transportat ion that I was
providing many years ago called Little Tykes Service
[was] we picked up the kids where the parents wanted
us to pick them up—whether it was from their home or
from another centralised area, which was safe—and
then dropped them off right to t heir school . . . [we
drove] right into the gate and it was very safe. So it
would be nice to see that we encourage that kind of
entrepreneurship to this whole approach to . . . our
young people and getting them to school.
So I was very, very, very much encouraged by
some of these recommendations, as I was looking at
the Executive Summary, that were coming out.
Now, also on the very bottom of page 11, it
says, “Unfortunately, poor road traffic conditions u ndermine the efforts of the health sector to encoura ge”
(over on page 12) “active transport.” And one of the
challenges, certainly with our roads, Mr. Speaker , is
that we may be a little late to getting to this now, but
there probably was, at one point in time, an opportunity for us to change our main roads so that they were a
bit safer. Now that we have much of the private ow nership of homes and the likes that are right on the borders of the public roads, it is going to be difficult to
be able to put more sidewalks out.
It has proved to be a challenge, especially for
Public Works, in making sure that people are trimming


Bermu da House of Assembly back their hedges, are taking care of even their walls
and ensuring that they do not fall over. We have had
tragic instances where that has happened, as well on
our roads, where private owner ship has not taken
care of their walls and they have fallen over and we
have seen the hardship of loss of human life in i nstances like this here.
And so Bermuda’s roads do provide a real
challenge. And I know that while I was in Public Works
when they were looking even at crosswalks and lights
for crosswalks, there is a science to being able to . . .
where do you put the actual bus stop or where do you put the crosswalk so that it is not on a blind corner?
And that can get difficult in Bermuda. It certainly can
get extremely difficult. And all you are trying to do is
put in these crosswalks to slow the traffic up, but at
the same time you do not want to affect the traffic flow
so much so that it becomes vexatious and people
start exercising road rage, which we all see already
way too prolific at this time in our history.
And so it will interesting as they coordinate
this Green Paper, and the interested parties coordi-nate with Public Works on the road works that are
needed to be done. I must say that the road works
was always . . . [they are] great teams there as they
go about the Island ensuring that our roads are as safe as possible.
I also want to give tribute to, on page 12
where it mentions in the Summary about the Railway Trail. And we heard good news las t week from the
Minister about the Railway Trail down in Flatts there.
And certainly, while we were Government, we saw the
Friends of the Railway Trail doing great work and i nvesting millions of dollars in the Railway Trail of Bermuda. And so, we want to give them a hearty thank
you for the work that they are doing as they work with
Public Works and the Government on the whole. It
does make a difference. I have been through the trails
and I have seen many people on cycles who use the
trails to cycle in rela tive safety, as opposed to having
been on the road travelling back and forth.

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Sorry?
[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: It was that light? I did not
see you . . . ah! I did see you on the Railway Trail last
week Saturday. The Minister was out getting some
exercise.
So what I wanted to do, Mr. Speaker , I am
going to continue through here on some of the things
that I highlighted. I also noticed on page 26, as it was
talking about bus passen ger safety, where it says,
“There is also a concern, particularly for children, that
DPT buses do not have seatbelts. ” And that is where I
segued earlier, talking about if we had dedicated bus-es for [school] service, that would go a long way . . . I
am sti ll not quite sure about the seatbelts and how
they are on buses, but we will leave that up to the
Minister. Maybe he can enlighten us on some of the
new buses and whether or not that is in actual fact a
potential reality that we might see.
I also took not e on page 30 that there is an
MOU that was commenced on the 14
th of November
last year with Rocky Mountain Institute “to investigate
and develop a strategy to transition from the current
fossil fuel infrastructure to electric bus fleet.” In addi-tion to that, I guess I wanted to ask the Minister . . .
so, we know that we have transportation experts, and
I know that we have one up at WEDCO (and I am not
sure how much he is being used there), but we do
know that in other populous cities and the likes they
have these engineers and the likes who look at how
we coordinate things. And I was just curious as to who
we are liaising with, who we are seeking to create
some partnerships with, in helping us look at the complete infrastructure of transportation from the very b eginning of the sunrise down at St. David’s and St.
George’s to the beautiful sunsets that happen up in
Somerset and Dockyard. Who are we dealing with
that is assisting us in putting together what we believe is, as I said already, the Minister said, the future b egins now with transportation?
It almost made me feel like the Jetsons, when
I was young watching the Jetsons. I saw a recommendation in here where they said we need to spend more time investing and looking at . . . a personal ai rcraft, personal flight machines that would fly two or
three of us. You know, I must admit that, Mr. Speaker ,
at the time when I was talking to you that I would be
out of the House, I was over in Dubai. And they had
instituted drones that carried . . . I saw them with my
own eyes. They were testing these drones that held
six people in them. And they were flying these drones
from one building to the next transporting people. I
mean, it is pretty phenomenal at where our transport ation is going.
And, again, as I have already said, Bermuda
has a unique opportunity of being small enough to test many of these things and to be the test pilot, if you
will, of many of these innovative ideas. I am not sure
about the airspace right now over Bermuda with the airport not too far away, but I marvel at the technology
that does exist out there that makes it available for
individual flight and does not require a pilot’s licence.
Interestingly enough, as I went through this
paper, and started looking at things, I was on YouTube. There were m any of these vehicles out
there . . . they do not even require a pilot’s licence. So
you can just go on, get instructions for two hours, and
you can fly this thing as far as you can go as long as
you can get back because, you know, you are going over a lot of water out there right now and you want to
make sure you can get back.
1774 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly So I do take note of that and, also on that
page, it says here . . . I talked about the ridership a lready, and so on the Public Ferry side, on page 31 the
overview there says, “95 pe r cent of the general public
who participated in the 2018 ‘public transport survey’
said” (and this is very significant and I want to make
sure that those who did not have the opportunity to
read all of this [hear this], it says) “95 per cent of the
general public who participated in the 2018 ‘public
transport survey’ said that the ferry system was reli able.”
I mean we need to commend those guys for
the work that they do. That is quite staggering, with
those kinds of numbers, that we have got that support
for those guys and the work that they are doing. To only have 5 per cent say that it was unreliable is quite
phenomenal, actually.
And I do believe that we do have scope and
more opportunity, which is why I am asking, Who are
we talking to so that we can c oordinate the ferry services with the bus services, ensuring that the times
match so that we are moving people back and forth?
To hear that we are already at a good start with the
ferry service, it is quite commendable, actually, and
we probably need to incorporate more if we are looking at having fewer buses. Because as we certainly go
on down further we find that with the ferry system, that more people would actually use the ferries if there
were . . . and I will get to it at some point because
there is s ome kind of trade thing it mentioned. I have
got it highlighted; I guess I will find it as I go through. But this trade partnership . . . I will find it as I go
through here.
Now, I guess one of the—

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: What is that?
[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Is that all I have got, Mr.
Speaker ? My goodness, so let me go to some of
these other highlights here then . . . if I have only got
that short period of time.
But I was a bit confused at first as to what was
a high speed ferry and a fast ferry. So as I was rea ding through it —

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Yes, I think I got it now.
But what I questioned was, had we not already done the analysis on the high speed ferries?
Because we recognised that they were not cost -
effective. In purchasing these ferries certainly —

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: That is all right. I am just
saying.
So looking at the information, nothing has
changed. And that is the chal lenge, nothing has
changed. So we are hoping that with this Green P aper, since . . . since . . . everything is coming, Mr.
Speaker , that is why I asked for a White Paper to
make sure that we have a commitment, something
[written] in stone that says this is exactly what we are
going to do. So we will see what happens as we move along.
We will hold the Minister to this here. Again,
he has done some great work here with the technical
staff. We certainly are supporting all of the recommendations that are here, but I do believe [that with]
some of the information that is already available out there we can already start implementing some of these things.
And so I will, with interest, I recognise that I
do not have much time left
. . . sorry?

You have less than half a minute.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: And certainly I did not even
get to the last three- quarters of this report, but this
report gives a lot of great information. And I was excited about the fact of being able to read through this
here, Mr. Speaker . Much can be done and, again, if
we can get some of that Jetson feeling back into
transportation, it will be an exciting thing for Bermuda.
So I am looking f orward to what the technical
officers do with this, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker .
One thing that we . . . it is a term that we tend
to use very often, which is talking about vision and, they usually say, Hindsight is 20/20. And you know
me, I like to research why we use the phrases we use
and whatnot, and I like to try to educate people.
[Laughter]

And, as I said before, the
nurse that I am dating is helping to educate me on
anatomy. But the thing is when we talk about vision and we talk about it being 20/20, that means that . . .


Bermu da House of Assembly 20/20 is not necessarily the . . . you having perfect
vision. It is more so about the clarity and sharpness of
your vision, which is just one aspect —20/20. The
number 20/20 means that at 20 feet you can read something or se e things with the clarity that a normal
person could see from 20 feet, meaning that if you
have 20/100 vision that means you can . . . you have
to be 20 feet away to be able to see something that
the average person could see from 100 feet.

[Inaudible interjection]

I do not know. My eyesight is
actually correctible to 20/20 with my glasses.
But the thing is that the 20/20 part is just . . .
and the clarity and sharpness of vision is just one aspect. There are other things that go into really being
able to tell or monitor or gauge your eyesight health or
your visual health, such as your peripheral vision, your
hand- eye coordination, depth perception, your ability
to focus, and your colour vision—stuff like that.
And this is where the Green Paper tends to
come in with Transportation, because what I want to
touch on is something else that you will be able to see
in 20/20 which . . . and I mean when I say 20/20 more
specifically, hopefully, it should be July 2020, which is
the new L. F. W ade Air Terminal, all right? That is the
proposed date that we should be able to open it or it
should [be substantially completed], to be technically
correct.
Now, one thing that I noticed in this 189- page
Green Paper was that it did not spend too much tim e
talking about the air terminal and air arrivals. Now the thing is that air arrivals play a very big role in our
transportation infrastructure. Now, one might be as king why it was not covered in more detail. And one
reason could be that the civil service is responsible for
producing the Green Paper, and under the project
agreement with the [L. F. Wade] Air Terminal, air arr ivals are no longer necessarily the responsibility of government, but more so the responsibility of Skyport,
a private entity.
So what has happened is that over the last
two years Skyport has not been able to (how can I say
it?) adequately attract significant new air service.
Now, with that being the case . . . I am not here to
point fingers, I am not here to call names. What is
happening now is what I dub the trinity, the BTA
(Bermuda Tourism Authority), the BAA (Bermuda Ai rport Authority), and Skyport are now all working t ogether to ensure that we attract significant new air
arrivals to the country.
Now, with that being the case, to give you an
understanding or to put things in proper context, if you
look at some numbers out there now you would see
that last year we had roughly 450,000 arrivals or pas-sengers that flowed through the airport. The Tourism
Authority would say that approximately 350,000 of
them were visitors. And the new airport or the new [L. F. Wade] Air Terminal should be able to flow up to
750,000 passengers per year. So now that gives us the ability to roughly, approximately, double the number of passengers that we flow through the airport,
which means that we are going to theoretically double the [number] of people coming and going to and from
the airport itself.
If you look at the numbers provided in the
Green Paper and through the exit reports, they show that taxis are used by 80 per cent of air visitors. So if
we have 350,000 air visitors a year and 80 per cent of
them use taxis, and with this new air terminal and with the trinity’s work on being able to—the BTA, the BAA
and Skyport —attract more air arrivals, that means you
are going to need more taxis or more ways and
means to be able to transport people to and from the
airport. But this is something that was not . . . it could
have been covered a bit more in more detail, because
what happened is, as I go back to the 20/ 20 vision, a
lot of Members focused on the 20/20 vision, meaning the top three—the ferries, the buses, the taxis —but
not necessarily things coming out of the airport.
But [an] aspect about the airport that was di scussed, and that I believe is worth looking into a bit
more, was to provide better communication between
the airlines and the taxis (or the ground transportation
providers) so that we do not end up, as Members have said before me and the Honourable Member that
just took his seat, the Honourable Craig Cannonier,
about how we have persons or visitors coming into the
airport or arriving at the airport and there not being
any taxis to their final destination.
Now, also, another aspect of being able to
become a little more efficient, in doing so, is to provide help for some of those taxis by, as mentioned in the
Green Paper, allowing hotels to provide their own
shuttle service to and from the airport, which then allows and frees up taxis from having to be dedicated or
stationed at the airport and can be s ort of flowing
throughout the country, throughout our transportation
infrastructure, and being able to be utilised by persons
who are, as the Honourable Member said before me,
enjoying themselves, enjoying the nightlife here in
Bermuda, having a drink or t wo at Place’s [Place] or
Spinning Wheel until about three o’clock in the mor ning.

[Inaudible interjection]

Well, yes, Place’s closes at
1:00 and then we go, I mean, some Members in here
do go to Spinning Wheel.
So therefore . . . but also another thing is allowing the buses to be able to pick up some additional bandwidth by providing luggage racks on the buses
so, therefore, we can now motivate persons to start
being able to catch the bus that goes right through the airport.
1776 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Also, another thing that I found interesting,
which was further back in the Green Paper, around
pages 135 or 136, was the reinstating of the airport
docks. And for those members of the public that are
not quite aware, leading up to and during the Amer ica’s Cup there was a dock that was out there on the
Grotto Bay side of the airport which was removed. But
in looking at the Green Paper it is suggesting that a
possible thing that could be done would be to have
the dock reinstated, put back in place, but also to
have another dock put down there at Castle Harbour so that, once again, the short run from the airport to
Rosewood Tucker’s Point could be done using the
water as a medium.
But also, another reason to have the docks
reinstated could be as a fail -safe, as a backup, as a
contingency plan in case we end up having something
happen to the causeway due to a natural disaster or
an act of God.
So those are things that I really do like that
were mentioned in the Green Paper, but also, one
thing that we need to sort of look at when I go back
into the air arrivals, is to be able to—and this might be
an indirect consideration that the Government might
want to have—look at really utilising our partnership
and our alliance with the United States Customs and
Border Protect ion. Because, as I mentioned in the
beginning, talking about air arrivals and increased air
arrivals, remember we enjoy the luxury of pre -
clearance. So if we are bringing more air arrivals to
the country, we want to make sure that they can enjoy
that same pre- clearance regardless of the time.
So we do not want all . . . and I am throwing
out hypothetical numbers. If we are attracting 10 ai rlines to Bermuda over the next two or three years we
do not want all of them landing at two o’clock in the
afternoon. W e would like to be able to spread it out
and have some come in at 10:00 at night and some
could go out at 11:00 at night and start really stretc hing the operational hours and utilising the most out of that new air terminal that we are developing right now.
But ultimately, Mr. Speaker , I understand and
appreciate that you like brief and concise speeches —
and that is what I plan on giving right now, because for me I am about to wrap up. But the thing is that —

[Inaudible interjection]

Well, no, I am going through
my main points, mainly about the airport, just making
sure that people understand the importance and its
contribution to the transportation infrastructure be-cause that is a . . . just like the cruise ships bring in
large numbers of people, so does the airport over time. And we need to make sure that we are able to have our transportation infrastructure grow and adapt
and be able to accommodate what is proposed to be
coming down the pipeline with new air service, new air
arrivals, increased air arrivals, increased visitor arr ivals that are coming down the pipeline.
And, Mr. Speaker , just so that I do not go out
of the Standing Orders, I do declare my interest as the
Chairman of the Airport Authority, which is part of,
what I call, the trinity —the Bermuda Airport Authority,
the Bermuda Tourism Authority, and Skyport. So I am
working with the Government, working with the other entities, to ensure that this does come in and does
come to fruition.
So, I have declared my interest there, but outside of my sole interest as Chairman of the Airport
Authority, the thing is that I believe that we all have an
interest in this Green Paper and we . . . and I think the
best way to explain i t, to illustrate it, is as in one of my
previous speeches I spoke on blood pressure. And I
would like to sort of say that transportation—not just
here in Bermuda, but transportation in any community,
transportation in any country —is essentially the lif eblood, the circulatory system, of said country.
Looking at the roads and the highways and
byways like veins and arteries and having vehicles being the blood itself, but the people are sort of the
blood cells or the little red blood cells that are carrying
the oxygen and all the nutrients around the body and
making sure that this country or community is happy
and healthy.
So the thing is that we need to make sure that
we are able to maintain the health of our transport ation infrastructure. And in order to be able to properly
maintain the health of our transportation infrastructure
we have to look at what is going into it, what is coming
out of it, what it is being asked to do, and what it
needs to be able to do. And I think that we [should not do this] too q uickly because we have a lot of good
data in this Green Paper, we have a lot of good options, we have a lot of good observations. But I just
want to make sure that the input and the contribution
of air travel, air transportation, and increased air lift
are at the forefront of these considerations of the
Green Paper as we decide to move forward so that we can, not just achieve, but maintain and sustain a clean bill of transportation health.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker .

Thank you very much, Mr. Whip.
I now recognise the Honourable Member from
constituency 9. Honourable Member Moniz, you have
the floor.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker .
First, just a matter of housekeeping, Mr.
Speaker . The Member who spoke immediately before
me declared his interest. I do not recall the Minister
himself declaring his interest.



Bermu da House of Assembly An Hon. Member: Well, you were not here.

To be honest with you, I am going to
have to check the note on that one.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: I do not believe he did.
And so just . . . it is important, because there
are commercial vehicles involved. I believe he has a
beneficial interes t in Island Construction, which runs a
variety of commercial vehicles, including tractor trai lers, tipper trucks, et cetera. And also I believe he was selling tyres. One of his companies has an interest in and was selling tyres, including to the government at
one point.

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Don’t forget the other 12
businesses. If you are going to plug me, plug me
good.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: I am plugging you good. You
are plugged.
[Laughter]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: You are plugged. Just as you
wish to be, you are plugged. Consider yourself
plugged.
And going from there, Mr. Speaker , he will get
his turn to speak again so he can have a chance to
clear the record.
Now, again, I would like to repeat the point
that was made by my Leader on this side, that while
this is . . . a discussion paper is good to have, we really need a White Paper in terms of what the Gover nment intends to do out of all of this. So I mean, obv iously, what you want to see, from my point of view, is
you want to see meaningful ana lysis. And in many
cases, of course, the Government does not have the
numbers it needs, so what numbers it has are here.
But there are numbers and numbers of situations
where they say that they are going to get more real time analysis of, for example, ridership on the buses,
et cetera. And so once you have your analysis, you need to come to a conclusion and make a commi tment.
Now, there are a number of commitments
made through this paper, and I will run through them
as we go. But then once you have those c ommitments
to say we are going to do A, B, or C, for policy you
need timelines and you need an approximation of
what the dollar figure that will need to be allocated by
the Minister of Finance in order to make this happen.
And those are the things that are missing. So, that is
why you need a White Paper, and I think it is mentioned in this Green Paper that it is normal to have a
White Paper come out afterwards.
In fact, in the UK I think Green Papers are often discussion papers, so they are not necessarily
published and they go directly to a White Paper. But
to just have a Green Paper and then not go to a White Paper is something that is not normal and I do not
believe that it is desirable, because we do not know
where we are or where we are going.
Now, wi th respect, I will look at the Gover nment commitments that are made in here. And the
first one that comes up is the buses. Now, you know,
we have this whole thing with the bus schedule. The
Minister at one point in time said that he was revie wing the winter bus schedule and then, as we came into
spring, he had a number of press conferences —three,
four, five press conferences —saying that this new
winter bus schedule was coming into effect. At that
time we were coming into the spring, and the difference is that that is when the cruise ships come in so
you get all of those tourists starting to come, which the Honourable Member from constituency 2 spoke to. So
the whole ball game changes at that point in time. So you are not really looking at the winter bus sche dule.
In the [Green] Paper it speaks at page 25,
Context, at F, it says “ Currently, DPT is working on a
new winter bus schedule .” So I get very confused
about whether they have a new winter bus schedule or just a new schedule. In any case, we know the
schedule did not work, it has now been withdrawn,
and I am not quite sure where we are, whether we are
just going to sit with the old schedule or whether we
are doing more analysis. And if we are doing more
analysis, how long is that going to take? So, at page 29 of the Green Paper it talks
about “Government’s Perspective on Public Buses”
and item [ 1.1.7. ]2 there they talk about three factors.
First the “ change in the pu blic bus schedule to reduce
the number of buses needed at peak times and
throughout the da y; two, restoration of a budget allocation to allow for new bus purchases and, three, a
proper annual maintenance budget. The Government
continues to act on all three of these factors. ”
Now, you know, the questions immediately
arise: How long are we talki ng about to get this budget? And how much money are you asking for each of
those items? We are already past the budget cycle.
We do not have another budget until March or April of
1778 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly next year. So what are we doing about that? There is
no detail in there and, hopefully, the Minister can put
some meat on that bone.
I mean one of the things I was concerned
about, something that was mentioned by the Oppos ition spokesman are the so- called grey routes which
have been introduced. And the Green Paper talks about gre y routes being the school routes. But I b elieve there are also other grey routes. Originally, grey
routes were routes that were not included in the orig inal union agreement negotiated with the union. As
routes were added then special concessions were
made and, in some cases, the drivers, I believe, were
getting overtime rates for driving these grey routes in
normal working hours. And I want to know whether that is still going on, or whether that has stopped. And
that was one of the big impediments to getting a new
schedule because, of course, the bus drivers operate
on a seniority basis. The senior guys were picking the
routes where they got paid more money and they were not likely to say, Oh, well, now they are not special bus routes anymore, they are norma l bus routes
after 20 years.
So we need to know what is going on with
that. And it is not a problem which has arisen quickly,
it is a problem that has arisen over the last 20 years.
Again, we are talking about, in item [ 1.1.7.]3,
under “Government’s Pers pective on Public Buses,”
the Green Paper says that the “ DPT has taken deli very of four new buses, with an additional eight buses
on order and due for delivery in 2019.” Now, again, I would like to see a dollar figure put on that. We did
discuss that during the budget. I think these buses, I think their first cost is close to half a million dollars
each and it something or was something like approaching $400,000, and I do not know if that was a
landed cost in Bermuda.
The way we get our buses is a very strange
way. We were dealing with people in Belgium. The
buses were being made in Germany. They had to be
shipped to Portugal to get customised. And when they
arrived in Bermuda they were always too wide or
there was always a problem with them. And you will recall there was a court case in Belgium and the mi ddleman over there in Belgium disappeared. He went on the lamb, nobody could find him. And the police have an arrest warrant for him. So there was a lot of
trouble concerning that.
And I do not know whether that has all
changed, whether there are new contracts and new
players in this game, but I agree with the statements
in the paper that the buses we are getting are too ex-pensive. They are the price of a small house in Bermuda. If you are paying $400,000 for each bus, you
can at least get a nice condo for $400,000.
So—

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Call me afterwards and I will
sort you out. I will take a commission, too. I am being
questioned about my knowledge of the real estate
market, but . . . yes.
They are talking about these buses, so we
need a dollar figure and we need to know if we have sorted out the wrinkles of buses arriving here and they
are too big and then they have to be fixed at great
expense or we just have buses that ar e too big on the
road. And the buses are dangerous. And I have had a lot of complaints from members of the public saying the buses travel too fast, they speed. And, in addition
to that, there have been people killed by buses in
Bermuda—both tourists and locals. They are dangerous vehicles on our small roads, so we should be examining [the use of] smaller buses, which is looked
into in this report. So I am glad to see that.
The suggestion here that we go to electronic
tracking with GPS on the buses . . . and I think that
was started with a small number of buses under the
OBA Government, I believe. So that we have . . . they
were talking about having a smartphone app with a
schedule and tracking. All of that is a good idea. But
the proof of the pudding is in the eating and, again,
how long? So, what is the timeline on that? How long
is that going to take? How much is it going to cost?
And obviously you want to do it on an incr emental basis. It talks here about eliminating printed schedules. Well, you do not want to do that until you
are sure you have got a robust app which everyone is
happy with. You still do have people who do not have
cell phones and you have visitors who may not have their phones on roaming if it is expensive.
But the ideas here are good ideas —cashless,
digital fares, and real -time trip planning features, Wi -Fi
on public buses. Again, you know, these are wish- list
sort of things, which all make sense. But you have got
to put a dollar figure on them to know where you are
going with it.
So it speaks to the need for more investigation. And, you know, I am a bit disappointed because I
thought that was taking place—ridership information.
And I guess the buses that presently have GPS are
getting ridership information, perhaps, at least times
or so mething. They are talking about automatic passenger counts. Maybe the Minister can speak to that
in more detail. Do we really know nothing about passenger counts? Is it all anecdotal evidence, as the
Green Paper says? You would think we would have
somethin g better than that and, hopefully, there is a
timeline for getting something better than that.
Now, with respect to going to greener buses,
the idea of renewable fuels or hybrid diesel -electric or
battery electric vehicles, in some places they use pr opane or LNG buses, [they are] saying that Gover nment is currently reviewing all options. And, you know,
it can be difficult and time- consuming changing to new
systems and it would be good if the Minister would
keep the House up to date on those [options] on a


Bermu da House of Assembly regular basis. There are many things in here that we
should be hearing about on a regular basis.
I agree that the fleet in general is too old to try
and switch it to electric, which is what it says here.
That is a fair point.
Now, it talks about “ advocates for smaller
buses, minibuses or shuttles —either private ventures,
public -private . . . or . . . subsidized by the public
purse.” Now, this raises one of my bugbears when
you talk about minibuses. I think the paper later on
talks about capping minibuses at 180. They talk about
getting, I think, 20 more that are for the physically
challenged. I think the report says that there are 147
minibuses now. And one of my bugbears is well, what
are the service level agreements for each of those 147 minibuses?
Now, it seemed to indicate that once upon a
time there was . . . when they first started there was a
very rough agreement that they would serve in certain
parishes. But now I do not think this applies anymore.
And I would like to be corrected, but I think the y just
do whatever they want to do.
So while you get the Minister complaining
about —and in the Green Paper complaining— that
taxis are not on the road 16 hours a day, well, how
many hours a day do minibuses have to be on the
road? And what do they have to do? Who do they have to carry? Where do they have to go? I hear anecdotal stories saying someone has got a number of
minibuses and they sit in their backyard until the
cruise season starts and then they all go to Dockyard
where they can make money shuttling people back
and forth from Horseshoe Beach. And as a public service vehicle, I do not think that is really serving the
public if they are just providing sort of that minimal
level of service.
So while you are reviewing the service level of
taxis, I would not let minibuses off the hook. I do not
think Bermuda is being properly served by these minibuses.
But I agree with the idea to look at some
smaller vehicles because it talks about some of the minibuses being up to 30 -seaters and the Gover nment bus being 38, so it is really not much between
them. But I am sure one costs several hundred thou-sand dollars less than the other because our big bus-es are customised in Europe and they are very expensive.
With regard to the ferries, you know, I take the
point that the ferries are extremely expensive and they
are probably the least cost -effective mode of public
transport that we have. It costs a lot of money and
relatively few people, in terms of people who take
public transport, are travelling on the ferries. And s o
we need to somehow rationalise that. Whether there
is a way of privatising any of it, I am not sure, but it is something we need a proper study of again with some
proper analysis, and for the Minister to come to the
House with some concrete proposals. Here it says, “ Government will pursue a ferry
service strategy that focuses on the purchase of fast
ferries ” (and I think that is as opposed to high speed
ferries), “as those are less expensive to run and they will provide more flexibility in terms of routes and
scheduling. ” And that sounds like it is sensible. But I
would like to see some analysis of what they cost.
There is no statement here saying, well, a high speed
ferry costs a million dollars and a low speed ferry
costs half a million dollars. I think the figures are act ually much higher than that. The figures I remember
were up towards $30 million when I remember the
high speed ferries being bought.
And I do note that the only reference there to
financing really is in 1.2.3.5 on page 36 where it says, “It is subject to capital project funds becoming avail able” (for these fast ferries and saying), “ Capital costs
may be partially offset by selling the current fleet .” But
obviously that indicates we are still at a very early
stage. That underlines the need for a White Paper,
because we need to know, again, what the timeline is.
A lot of these things are built -to-order so the process
takes years. We need to know what the . . . the idea of
what they cost and what the timeframe would be if we
were to buy these ferries.
The idea of transport fare media is talking
about getting rid of paper tickets and, you know, using
smartphone apps and being able to pay by credit card, et cetera. It is a great idea. They say they have
an RFI out there now and they are waiting for an RFP.
And I congratulate them on that; that is a good idea.
And under the Student Transportation, at
page 53, the Government is saying that they are moving to “a dedicated free school bus service” which can
take the children straight to the school up to the end of
secondary school from the age of 5 to 19. And then I
note that “27 per cent said that they take the public
bus to school and 4 0 per cent” (a higher number)
“said that they take the public bus home from school .”
So, again, you need a timefram e. Perhaps the
Minister can give us a timeframe on this dedicated
free school bus service, what that involves, how many
buses, et cetera.
There is a section on page 62 on Gover nment’s Perspective on Accessible Transportation. They talk about increasing the number of public service vehicles that are accessible. We on this side fully
support that.
The Government says it is going to “ review
options for disabled transportation service for residents ” and saying that they have 20 applications for
minibuses which are wheelchair accessible, and we
fully support that.
It does say here at page 62 at 2.6.5, “ Minibus
operators who receive permits for, and licence, wheelchair accessible vehicles will be encouraged to
establish a booking or di spatch service for prearrange d transport. ” But now what that basically is sa ying is that minibuses need to be more organised for
1780 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly the physically disabled. But the truth is minibuses just
need to be more organised, in my view.
When the Government speaks to private
transportation, they t alk to poor driving habits, talk to
drinking and driving, inattention, red lights and we will
all agree with that.
In 3.7.2, I am not sure if that is a misprint. It
says, “ Recognising that minicars appear to present a
safer alternative to motor cycles or auxiliary cycles,
the Ministry of Transport will not pursue legislative
changes to enable minicars to become a second car
. . . .” Is that correct? They will not? Because it is sa ying here that it would be a good idea and then it sa ying this is a really goo d idea but we are not going to
do it. Maybe it means —

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: —maybe it should read “ will
now pursue. ” It says “ will not pursue, ” so that does not
make any sense.
It is saying that “the TCD Traffic Officers will
carefully monitor the impact of minicars ” and I am dubious about that. Again, I suspect that any evidence from traffic officers will be nothing more than anecdotal, they will not be keeping a computerised record or
anything like that, and I do not think that this is really
sufficient. But we in general agree that minicars are
doing a great job and we can probably do [with] more
of them. The dark visor saying is as usual.
The complaint about LED headlights is interesting. I mean, you know, the thing about . . . it really
talks about LED headlights when they are on high beam. And when we have a lot of Bermudians —
particularly older Bermudians —who drive around
Bermuda on high beam on a permanent basis, why do
they do that? They do that because they have poor
vision. And why do they complain? It is the same people who use the high beams who complain about them because the people who use them have poor
vision and the people they bother have poor vision.
And you might say, Well, how do you know
that? Well, I know that because I just got implants in
both of my eyes. I can get a free bus ride now, I am 65. I had cataracts and when you have cataracts you
have blurred vision. So you may prefer to use high beams to enable you to have better vision at night and
when other people use them you have blurred vision
so you cannot see a darn thing. And what people
need to be encouraged to do is to have their eyes
tested for cataracts and get their eyes tested on a
regular basis.
Recently I was abroad with someone who got
his eyes t ested. He was 45 years old and he was badly in need of glasses —prescription eyeglasses —and
he had been driving in Bermuda since he was 18 without any glasses at all. And the optician abroad
was shocked by that. Now we come to page 90, which is Gover nment’s Perspective on Public Service Vehicles, and
this also covers . . . that is, 4.8.2. It says “ Government
is not prepared to restrict, ban or put a moratorium on
the number of commercial vehicles already licensed,
including tractor trailers and large construction equi pment. The increase of 338 more commercial vehicles
is not sufficiently alarming to put any new legislation in
place to reduce this category of vehicle. ”
[Section] 4.8.3 says “ Legislating the times
when large trucks are allowed on the road is not a
practical solution to solving congestion issues. Continuing with strict measures via policy to restrict the
hours of large commercial vehicles on the road in the
morning and evening will only impede commercial
growth and raise prices on goods to residents and
visitors. ”
And that was, you know, what concerned me
about the Minister because I know he has an interest
in a company which has a number of those vehicles.
There it also talks about minibuses, but I have
already addressed those. And it says “ Minibus Reg ulations are under consideration and will be introduced”
and I am very happy to hear that. And perhaps the Minister could give a bit more background on that.
With respect to the minicars as opposed to
the minibuses, they are talking about the rental pool,
and they are saying they will make final decisions “ at
the end of the 2019 summer season, after further
consultation. ” I am glad to hear that.
But with respect to the minibuses, again, I
think there need to be service level agreements.
Typically, the Government says that it is going
to encourage the take- up of electric vehicles and I
hope the Minister can bring those to the House to encourage people to use those as they, hopefully, become more affordable and have a greater range.
Page 121 refers to Gov ernment’s Perspective
on Road Traffic, and I am sure we all agree with that,
better education, better driving habits. It would be nice
to have a little bit more meat on the bone there about
our timeframe and who is doing this. It says . . . TCD,
they are s aying, is reviewing the current Traffic Handbook and their licensing requirements. Maybe the Mi nister can get a detail there on a timeframe and when
we are likely to see that.
We do not want things, you know, obviously,
in these sorts of areas . . . happy for it to fall between
the cracks.

[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Yes.
Talking about sidewalks, you know, I reme mber when the PLP were in power before they were
going to bring a sidewalk all the way down Harbour
Road in Paget. They got so mewhere up in Warwick
and then quickly stalled. But I think there are lots of
places in Bermuda . . . I know there is a map at Public


Bermu da House of Assembly Works with the strips of land that they already own.
Rather than getting new strips of land, I would encourage the Governm ent to look at the strips of land
they already own and, just on a regular incremental basis, continue to build sidewalks, which we all agree are positive. And everyone wants to see more people
use bicycles and we encourage all of that.
Again, there is some talk there about Go vernment transition on page 145, the Government’s transition of the government fleet of vehicles (like at
Public Works, et cetera) to electrical hybrids. And it says there is a current investigation regarding the
transition of the bus f leet. In general, it would be nice
to have a more detailed report on where that is going
and sort of a timeframe.
With regard to the taxis —I am looking at page
154—Government’s Perspective on Visitor Transpor-tation, as you were talking about an app for bus es, it
would be conceivable that we would have an app for
taxis, you know, either run by Government under go vernment contract, an app that would allow people to
call a taxi. And that is also how you can, if you want to
monitor taxis, that they are doing more hours on the
road, et cetera, and where they are at any given time,
it would make sense to have GPS in an app working.
And perhaps the Minister could speak to that in a
more concrete fashion.
You know, there is talk in the back about
Gypsy Cabs at [page] 156, but obviously, you know, they provide a cheap alternative for less well -off people and I would be the last one to tackle that. And a lot
of the Gypsy Cab drivers know their customers personally and while it is technically illegal, if you cannot get a taxi and there is not a decent bus schedule, and
you have ladies carrying bags of groceries, it is hard
to know what their alternative would be.
So we are generally looking for timeframes on
all of these things, including, you know, speed cameras, et cet era, et cetera. So we look forward to, as I
said, the Minister putting more meat on the bone.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker .

—and listening audience.
First of all, I would like to just commend the
preparers of this report, because it definitely delves
into all the areas that we probably think about or we
have discussed, whether it be with friends, family around the living room, or the dining room tables. So, I
was refreshed to read it and then see that some of those things that you normally would not find in a r eport to be in there.
Mr. Speaker , I believe we as a country can
accept that we have transportation issues. And so I am hopeful that what we see coming out of this report allows us to address our issues head- on and through
a meaningful consultative process because that is
what has already been started, so I do not believe that
we would, as a Government, stray away from that.
The report in itself is very long because I believe it is 192 or 196 pages, and so, for today, I have actually selected some areas which I believe that m y
people have spoken to me about and would like to
hear about. So you and I both know where I hail from,
which is the best parish in Bermuda, which is St.
George’s.

[Laughter]

But, Mr. Speaker , St. George’s has
challenges in terms of transportation. And I know that
in my time of sitting on the Corporation of St. George’s
we have talked about, you know, and in some capac ity tried to address some of our challenges.
Some of the things that we . . . like we have
talked about our ferries. We have talked about the
buses, the minibus service, the Gypsy Cabs. So these
are not unknown issues to us. These are issues that
are well known to us. And so having some of them
addressed in this document, I believe, gives us some
way of how we actually are going to move forward.
My colleagues are smiling probably because I
am talking about St. George’s, but I do not know why
they would be surprised, Mr. Speaker . I do not think
anybody in this room should be surprised.
[Inaudible interject ion]

Anyhow, we are going to continue
to deal with transportation today.
And to be truthful, Mr. Speaker , some of the
general lift issues that St. George’s has have [carried
over] into other areas, especially probably into our tourism product. And so when you look at the situation
with general transportation issues and you look at our
1782 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly tourism product you can see that there is a correlation
between the challenges we have in transport that are
spilling out into the challenges we have in term s of our
tourism product.
So Mr. Speaker , it is, for me, and I believe
that this report in some way touches on it, but I would
hope that there is some priority for the St. George’s
transportation issues to be addressed. I am pretty
sure that the Minister k nows I will probably be front
and centre making sure—

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: I know that.

—that those issues stay highligh ted. But one of the things . . . I know on page 28 it
speaks to East End . . . East End . . . yes, the bus
service. And so in the report, I think it primarily addresses St. David’s, because it says the East End bus
service. I lost my pages a little bit, but I think it primar ily speaks to St. David’s and the challenges that they
have with bus service.
But I also wa nted to say that there are other
. . . I know, like, for instance, if you know St. George’s
well, we have an area called Cut Road. And we continue to have transportation issues on the Cut Road
side. And so when I say “transportation issues” it is
that my constituents that live on Cut Road, they have
bus service in the morning—first thing in the mor ning—the bus is at 8:05 and then they have a bus service in the afternoon which basically brings them
home. So throughout the day there really is not an ything th at takes you down into the Cut Road area. And
the bus stop— the main bus stop—if you actually lived
down by Gates Fort, and you have to go up out to that
bus stop, it is not a short walk, Mr. Speaker .
So I am hopeful that things like this area get
addressed within this report as well because I have
senior residents that stay down there and they talk about when they have to go get their groceries. And if
they do not have transportation, part of the reason
they are buying half of their groceries or things that
are very light is because they would have to either
walk down or hope that they would get a ride, maybe by a Gypsy Cab or something, so that they can take
their groceries home. And so that would be something
where it may not warrant full bus service and m aybe it
warrants looking at things that are incremental
throughout the day that can be either consumed into
the regular bus service or maybe we can look at minibus service for that area.
And although it is not outside of my area of
our old St. George’s, Ferry Reach has that same struggle as well in St. George’s. And the residents that
. . . can you imagine . . . you know where the main
radius is, I know you know that far, Mr. Speaker —

But it used to go all the way out to
the Martello Tower. That is not a short walk either,
and we have people that live all the way out there. So
I hope that consideration would be given for those
persons who live in those areas.
Mr. Speaker , the other thing that . . . in this
. . . on page 28, under the East End Public Bus Service, Stakeholder Comments & Thoughts, they actua lly say, “ Run a feeder service for this area using smal ler public buses ; outsource these runs to private minibus operators using public transportation fares ; and/or
spons or a private minibus service for this area. ”
So, the fact that the stakeholder comments
are sort of in line with what I am saying tells you that the people who use these buses or live in these areas
see that it is a bit of a challenge, but we do not see i t
as something that there is not some sort of a solution
that can be given.
Mr. Speaker , I am looking on page 30 b ecause I am going on . . . page 30, section 1.1.7.6 talks
about the use of data to determine bus routes. And I think that this is key becaus e as we begin to look forward, the data will be important in determining which
buses go where, pretty much. So, as I said to you,
these two areas that I mentioned they would not necessarily fall within in a regular bus route, but they
would be, I would hop e that they would be considered
because there is not any data for it. Okay? There is
not . . . you know, I cannot say that “X” amount of
buses is here, but I do know that the bus that comes
out of Cut Road every morning is full, so there is some
data in that.
That the anecdotal data or evidence, which is
going to be interesting, I do not know how we would figure that out other than someone coming and telling
us that something is needed, but hopefully we will find
a way to be able to do that. Data is key in this time that we live in because it is the data that is going to
tell you or give you some level of solution.
Mr. Speaker , the other thing that I want to talk
about is ferries, so that is just actually on page 31.
And it talks about the use of ferries. And I actually
found this information to be interesting because I
know in my area we have ferries, we do have lift -off
ferries. Do I think it could be improved? My answer
would be yes. Would I like to see a commuter ferry for
St. George’s? My answer would be triple yes. B ecause I think that this is something that we had at one
point and we actually . . . because we do not have it
now. And if you used it, then it is something that you would actually miss. I was a person who used the commuter ferry when we had it and I think there
should be some consideration around putting that
back in place again. Because if I am using the ferry,
Mr. Speaker , that is one less car that is coming into
Hamilton. And if the boat is going out full that is sev-eral cars that are not coming into Hamilton.

Mm-hmm.


Bermu da House of Assembly Mrs. Renee Ming: Because every time I am in town
the first thing I hear people saying is, Can’t find anywhere to park .
And so as we start to look at whatever the s olutions are going to be, I think we need to look at them
on a more holistic level of if we do this it impacts this,
if we do this it impacts this, so that we are not working in silos and saying, I’m over here and I’m doing this ,
but we want to be able to look at what the impacts are
on the other areas.
So I do think that the information that was
garnered in reference to ferries was interesting. And then the fact that, basically, we were told via this r eport that people would like to see more ferries. But
there is no way we can discount the actual cost of what it takes to run a ferry. And so one of my suggestions would be that would we consider options for a
less expensive ferry and maybe a consideration for
less expensive fuel options? Because if we . . . and I
believe that this is something that we will achieve because the data here tells us that persons would like to
see more ferries.
On page 33, Mr. Speaker , the ferry system
actually gets a really good rating in terms of reliability.
And under the very reliable almost . . . well, about
47.57 per cent of the respondents to the survey said
that they think that it is very reliable and 8.31 per cent
say “extremely reliable.” And so that is information
there we can . . . there is obviously some confidence
in the ferry system. And so that is something that we
can use definitely to ensure that as we move forward,
the fact that people feel comfortable using it or they
believe that it is reliable, that is something that I be-lieve that we can capitalise on.
And then on the exact same page, Mr.
Speaker , Graph 9, wh ere it says, “How do you usually
get to work?” And the largest column is “Drive alone.” And so is that a number that we can change? B ecause that is 46.81 per cent of the people saying, I
drive alone. But if you drive alone in your car maybe
you would be ok ay riding the ferry and maybe that
number . . . because there is not a statistical data
breakdown of it, but I am pretty sure that some of these people that are here would not mind parking the
car and jumping on the ferry —

—especially if they believe the ferry to be reliable. And I think “reliable” is the key word
in this because you have to believe that it is coming, it
is going to be able to allow you to make your commi tment, wherever that is, and that you do not ha ve any
issues with that.
So maybe my question here is, If we improve
what we believe to be our public ferry system, can we possibly change the number that is in Graph 9? And
to be honest, I believe that we can, Mr. Speaker . One of the questions that I ha ve been questioning for years, Mr. Speaker , because it never made
sense to me, and for me things just generally have to make sense, because in St. George’s we have used
ferries. And over the last few years we had the Millennium ferry, and then we allowed N CL to bring in their
own ferry for their users. And I did not understand it at the time, I mean, I know that we are in a five- year
thing and maybe at 2021 when we begin to look at
planning for these things, do we actually want to have
direct competition for our own ferries? Because when you look at the revenue later on in the report for the
actual ferries and what we spend and what we actua lly make, is there not revenue that is being lost in the
fact that we have an additional ferry?
And I remember when I s at in another place,
Mr. Speaker , a few years ago and I questioned this, it
was the fact that those ferries are directly tied to the
cruise ship and they are going to transport their vis itors. Would we not benefit financially if they were us-ing the public ferry and actually paying for it? But, of
course, there has to be an expectation that the ferry is reliable, it meets the needs, and that we have the lift
capability to be able to do that. But that is something
that I had questioned at that time.
On page 3 6 we get the Government’s Perspective on Public Ferries and I thought that section
1.2.3.2 was interesting. It says, “ The decision to move
to a fleet of high speed ferries was made so that Bermuda’s ferry service could directly compete with the
private car commute. As that fleet ages, a decision
must be made whether t o continue with this strategy —
which involves the further purchase of expensive bow -
loading vessels using jet propulsion engines.”
So that is going to let me segue into my next
thing which is th e bow loading. St. George’s has gone
through a huge exercise— and I thank the Corporation
of St. George’s for that —in taking the side- loading
ferry and they did modification work on Hunter’s Wharf
and we created bow loading. Now, somebody may
say well, what ’s the difference? Well it was a big difference, and definitely in terms of our disabled visitors
because side- loading did not allow you to put a
wheelchair on the boat. And so for the years of having
the Millennium that was the case. So our visitors who
may have disabilities or use handicap vehicles were
unable to board the ferry or use the ferry.
So the fact that we now have the bow loading,
I believe that it was completed . . . it was early . . . it
was in 2018. But I had actually someone who wrote to me and said, Thank you for allowing this to happen,
because they were not able to use the ferry before
when they visited Bermuda the previous year. And the
fact that the bow loading had been completed, they
were able to come down to St. George’s. Because,
you know, to me, if you come to Bermuda and you do
not get to go to St. George’s, then what was the sense
of coming, right?

1784 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly [Laughter]

Yes. So, I definitely think that, you
know, whilst it was an exercise where we spent, I believe it was j ust . . . it was over a million dollars, but it
was an exercise that was worth it and needed at the
time.
It is funny, because when you go back . . .
when you have these types of reports sometimes you have to expand outside of the report and you need to
go back and look at other things. And I went back to
. . . my gosh, I am going to get the year wrong, but
anyhow, it was 2005 or 2006, I believe, where we
were considering bringing in fast ferries. And I feel
that at this time, because when you speak to people now we almost act like we cannot live without the ferries, okay? We do, because they have almost become
like a necessity in terms of our public transportation
and I think that . . . I thank Dr. Brown because he was
a former Premier, but he was also the Minister for
Transport, for having that sort of a vision. Because I
think that if any of us are honest, we would say that
the ferries are here to stay. And although we have
reached the stage now where maybe some of the
ones we had from those years are ageing, we have an
opportunity to be able to look for less expensive,
cheaper fuel options for our ferries. So I would be pleased for us to be able to give that consideration.
Now, mentioning that we have an ageing fleet,
if you look on page 39, Mr. Speaker , and this is act ually, it says “Context” and I am keeping it in the context in terms of costs. I am a numbers person. So I am always looking at the cost for something or how that revenue is going. Because I believe if you spend a
dollar, you have got to f ind a way to make a dollar . . .
and maybe two, if we could. So the fact that we are
. . . our expenditure, though, for ferries . . . so in the
ferry revenue and buses, as well . . . so for buses we
actually take in—based on this table anyhow —it is
saying $6.4 million. But our expenditure is $21 million.
And for ferries it is $1.495 million, but the expenditure is $8.646 [million].
So I think that it would be in our best interest
to find a way to work this number to have a greater
revenue amount because, if not, if we are making . . .
and the overall expenditure is $30 million a year, but
what we are actually taking in is $7.979 [million], that
is less than 10 per cent of what it is we are actually
spending.
So, Mr. Speaker , that would be something
that wo uld have a wider discussion and, like I said, I
just believe we are at a space where we have that
time, like we have the opportunity to be able to do
that.
One of the things that was mentioned in the
report, and I saw it in several sections, was the need
to have sufficient signage. And it is funny because I
went around and I had a look and it is absolutely correct. I know because I know. Like for St. George’s, I know because I know. But if you go around and you
actually look . . . and especially St. George ’s, we are
definitely guilty of it. We could definitely do with better
signage with regard to our ferry and bus thing. So I
believe that that is actually a very minor thing that we can fix rather quickly.
Another section of the report that I thought
was i nteresting, Mr. Speaker , and it is funny because
it spoke to traffic. Oh, my gracious! Have any of you
ever spent a lunch time on the square in St.
George’s? Just come down one day between 12:00 and 2:00. You do not even have to stay until 2:00, you
can just come for about 15 minutes. At times it is chaotic, okay? The decision was made quite some time
ago to not even have public buses there because if
you fill that into the equation of there are two banks
right there on the square, you used to have BELCO in
the area, so everybody was trying to get into the
square area.
We then pedestrianised the square area, so
we took away the parking based out in the middle,
which probably from a safety standpoint made a lot of sense. But we still have . . . you know, people that
want to just drive on, go around the bridge, you have
the minibuses, you have bikes, you have cars, and so
in there you have a serious mix of . . . you have vis itors who want to appreciate the town, and then on the flipside you have residents who want to use the town,
because what we have in St. George’s, which is our
uniqueness, is a living and working town. So all of
these things when they come together can be chaotic
at times. But we just have to try and make sure that we find ways to make sure because the first thing on
my mind would be safety. Because, you know, obv iously, we want to make sure that everyone is safe.
So I am hopeful that . . . I read section 6 and it
speaks to better legislation and better enforceability.
In some cases I believ e we already had the legislation
before us, it is just a matter of enforcing what we a lready have to reduce the congestion.
Mr. Speaker , I definitely wanted to make sure
I spoke on the section where we talked about Active
Transport, which is like moving around and getting
around, because those of you who know know that I
have a community walk that we do every Saturday. And although we do it in St. George’s . . . you are
looking at me now, so you are quite welcome to join
us at any time tomorrow at 7:00 am. But for those of
you that know, we walk all around St. George’s. So
we touch the Railway Trail, we touch just about an ything anywhere. Trust me, we have done it. So when I
looked at the section on that I was like, Ah, okay. So
what do we see when we are out? And I have to admit I walk with a bunch of people who definitely are aware
and they like to make sure that they take pictures. And
if they see something that they believe to be an issue,
they let the area MP know and then, by virtue of that, Colonel B urch knows.


Bermu da House of Assembly So there are things, I believe, that can be
done to improve and encourage people to use those
byways because there is a . . . we, especially for St.
George’s, Mr. Speaker , which is what I am particularly
speaking about today, I touch on our his tory a lot. And
I do not really think that we can get away from the fact
that this is where it all started and so I truly do believe
that it deserves its due. I am not going to say that
there is a lot of improvement that can happen there, I
definitely woul d like to make sure that the paths are
clear and that we can always walk freely because
that, you know, those are some of the concerns that
we see that come out of our walk.
So in the Active Transport thing, I do believe
that there could be some improvement there in terms
of how we actually keep it.
And my last point, Mr. Speaker , was on section 8. And if you live in St. George’s, you would know
that this is almost like if you hit a beehive, okay? And
the particular thing that I am talking about there is th e
widening or deepening of the Town Cut. So to look at
the results that you get from this survey that was taken, especially if you look at Graph 50, it says 24 per
cent agree with widening the Town Cut, and we have
15 per cent that strongly agree. But you would have to
break these numbers down for me and let me know
how many were St. George’s people that took this . . .
that gave you this data right here because I canvassed, and I know what St. George’s people say.
And what is funny is that years ago, I thi nk,
you could have a very strong, Absolutely no. But as
times are changing and evolving, you are beginning to
hear some people say, Yeah, that might not be such a
bad idea. I used to get an earful of this from my Uncle
Phoopa during his time because he str ongly believed
that modification was the way to go. But I used to tell
him, Well, convince the people that stay down on Cut
Road that their house is not going to be underwater ,
all right? And I know that may sound crazy, but that is
what people think. They are like, If you open up that
water and those floodgates come in, my house would
be underwater, okay?
[Inaudible interjections ]

So . . . so . . . but I say all of that to
say, Mr. Speaker , that you . . . over time . . . and the
time that I am noting is that time that I used to sit on
the Corporation of St. George’s to the time of being a
representative here, you are seeing . . . there is a
changing mind- set. So maybe, based on this report, it
is time to have that wider conversation of if that is
something that would be considered.
Or . . . I am going to say the “or” because in
the Graph 51, it says, “Do you agree with building a new cruise ship pier in the Murray’s Anchorage area of St. George’s?” Now, this has strong support as
well. And so it does deserve, I believe, a wider conversation and it should fit into our wider plan of what it is that we actually even see for St. George’s. Because
if persons are willing to consider the cruise ship pier,
maybe that would be the way to go. I am not trying to
get my people all up in a tizzy down there.
But I hope that I have been able to convey
some parts of this report to you and maybe even offer some solutions. And I know it may be very one- sided
to St. George’s, Mr. Speaker , but the suggestions t hat
I have made can be used in other areas. But I believe that when I stand up and speak I am always for St.
George’s, so I have given you that aspect of it. And if Mr. Tyrrell wants to use some up in Warwick where he
does not necessarily have any other th ings to do an yhow, he can use those things.
But I want, like I said, I hope that I have offered support and solutions with regard to the report. I
thank the preparers of the report. I thank the Minister for bringing it forward and on that note, Mr. Speaker , I
will take my seat.
Thank you.

And I make it a habit of trying
to read the Green Papers that are produced by go vernments on various national issues. I find them very,
very educational, enlightening, and informativ e. It
gives me a true insight of what is going on in other
ministries, be they health, transportation, works and engineering, basically it just presents a compendium
of ideas, recommendations with . . . of strengths and
weaknesses.
I think these Green Pap ers should be made
available to most of our schools so that our students
could have access to them because they are very, very informative. And if we are going to talk about
Bermuda’s infrastructure then I believe this would be a
great document to pass ont o our young people so that
they can understand the transportation system here in
Bermuda. And, as I said, make these Green Papers
available to all of our schools so that our schools can have a better understanding of health care, transportation, works and engineering, and things like educ ation and other aspects of Government.
So like other Ministry’s Green Papers, to me,
Mr. Speaker , this Green Paper was very productive. I
thought it was thorough, and I want to commend those
people who had a hand in its pr oduction. I want to
commend the Government for bringing it forward, and
1786 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly I also learned quite a bit from it, Mr. Speaker . The to pics that they covered, I think, were quite relevant and
appropriate and I think that it is good that we are here
debating it today.
My only challenge, Mr. Speaker , and it was
mentioned earlier, is the White Paper, because we could have a compendium of ideas, topics, but at the
end of the day we want to know what the priorities of
Government will be. What instrument do we have to
ensure that there is discipline in ensuring that what is
mentioned in the White Paper or the issues in the Green Paper will be delivered to this country?
I was watching a television show where the
Minister said there was no intention of having a White
Pape r and I said, Oh, this is strange. No White Paper?
To me that just basically does not allow discipline to
be brought to the government process, Mr. Speaker ,
in regard to what priorities and what important issues the Government are going to do first during their terms
in Government. It just allows, without a White Paper, it
allows the Minister in Government to pick and choose from all over the place and there is no rhyme or reason for addressing the issues in a methodical fashion.
So I would have liked to h ave seen like most
governments do, this Government follow tradition and have a White Paper after the Green Paper. And, in
fact, I think on page 14 of this Green Paper they said they would probably have a White Paper to follow this
Green Paper. But the Mini ster has made it clear that
you are not going to tie him down and that there will
be no White Paper following this report.
Mr. Speaker , I am not going to go through the
whole report because a lot has been said already. I
am just going to address a few iss ues. I am not going
to be, you know, a long time, I do not think I will use
the full half hour.
As was said, the general issue for me is our
transportation system here in Bermuda has to be an
integrated transportation system whereby the public
transportat ion—the buses, the ferries —are linked and
connected under an integrated schedule and, in fact, it
will also embrace the [minibuses]. Right now we have
strong capacity going from the East End of the Island to the West End of the Island. The buses, the ferri es,
they are all connected.
But we have challenges out in the periphery
from going to North Shore to South Shore. We all
know about St. David’s, the transportation challenges
going from St. David’s Island to St. George’s. I know
in my constituency after 6: 00 pm it is difficult to get a
bus going down to South Shore Smith’s Parish after 6:00 pm, or even 7:00 pm. and the same thing if you
live along Harrington Sound Road. If you have a res ident who lives in the dense area up in the Minister’s
constituency , Horseshoe Bay Road, if you have fam ilies living there and they want to go shopping down at
Heron Bay, you know, there is no public transportation
that will go from south to north or south to the Middle
Road. As I said, I think, going from east to west is
well-managed and well -defined, but from north to
south or south to north across country, I think that
more work needs to be done in this space. And I particularly believe that the [minibuses] can be used to supplement what we have today. They could be used
with better regulations, better infrastructure, and better
support.
Now, I am going to get into the report proper.
The issue that basically had the most impact on me
was when I read section 6. Section 6 speaks to the Road Traffic. And they gave a history of accidents and
deaths in Bermuda and I will read some of it, Mr.
Speaker .
The report says, “ There were 227 deaths attributed to road traffic collisions between 1997 and
2017, which is an average of 11.3 deaths per year. ”
Mr. Speaker , to me we have to something
about the accidents that we have on our roads in r egard to motorcycles and vehicles. I do believe that the
minicars could be part of this solution, if we are going
to save some of the lives of some of our young people on our roads.
The report indicates that the Government may
consider allowing households to have a [minicar], as well as a regular vehicle, on an assessment number. I
hope that they do pursue this option, because if it can
get our young people off of these cycles, which are basically [deat h] traps that are taking the lives of our
young people and our tourists, then I think one life
saved is good enough of a result for me. So I would
encourage the Government to consider allowing minicars to be added as a second vehicle to hous eholds, purely for the safety.
And the report has provided statistics that basically confirm that there are fewer fatal accidents . . .
fewer fatalities in these minicars. The fatalities all,
primarily, involve motorcycles. So if we get these
young people off of these m otorcycles, then I think we
can try and save some of their lives. In fact, the report
said in 2016 1,685 people had accidents, 189 people
were admitted to King Edward Memorial Hospital, and
[there were] 15 fatalities. In 2017, there were 1,689
persons atte nded [to in] the King Edward Emergency
Room, or the [ Lamb Foggo ] Urgent Care Centre in St.
David’s, as a result of road traffic collisions. These are high numbers, Mr. Speaker, and they are consistent
numbers. As I said, in 2016, there were 1,685 people
requiring hospital services because of road accidents.
And in 2017, there were 1,689.
I think these statistics speak for themselves
and that we need to do things differently so that we
can get these young people off the roads in regard to
these motorcycles a nd reduce the number of acc idents and people who harm themselves on our roads.
I truly believe that the minicar is something that we
can examine, and they will be safer for everyone. In fact, it is not just the young people who would use it.
The seniors! I mean, seniors still ride motorcycles up


Bermu da House of Assembly into their 80s, 85, 86 years old. At that age their r esponses are not as positive as they ought to be and I
think the minicar would provide some added security
and will reduce the risk of them injuring themselves.
I note that the Government has said that they
have no intention of lifting the current requirement that assessment numbers only allow one car per hous ehold. As I said, I think this needs to be examined so
that, y es, you can have one car per household, but
you can also allow the household to have a minicar. So I will move on.
The other issue that caught my attention is
student safety. The issue there is not just safety.
When I was Minister, we had challenging issues in
regard to consistently getting our students to and from school, based on the availability of buses. Now, there
were many challenges in the bus scheduling, the bus
supply, and union issues; I accept that. But at the end
of the day, I did not feel that our students’ education
should suffer becaus e of what was going on in the
transportation industry. They had an important role to
play. They had to, basically, address their educational
needs. And for me, the fact that these issues were
going on when they were doing some of their external
exams just caused additional anxiety to our young
people. So I believe that our schools should have dedicated transportation for our young people so that they can get to school on vehicles that are reliable and
safe. And get them to school on time on a regular basis.
Now, these vehicles can, in my estimation, be
minivans. Again, more work has to be done in this space. I would encourage the Minister of Transport ation to examine the possibility of having a more int egrated system when it comes to our schools. I know
that in other jurisdictions, in the Caribbean, there are a
number of minibuses assigned to each school to ensure that their students get there on time on a regular
basis.
So I would invite the Minister to take that u nder advisement and consideration so that our schools
can, basically, function and our students can get there
on time.

Thank you very much. I thank
my colleague for his contribution.
As far as student safety is concerned, as we
all know, there has been a history of bullying before
and after school, and a num ber of parents have raised
their concern about the safety of their children. Again,
I believe that if we have an integrated, effective transportation system for our students, then the opportunity
for this bullying around the school premises or on the
way t o school will diminish.
The other issue is that we have a lot of young
people meeting in Hamilton and loitering and basically finding themselves in situations that are not that pos itive from time to time. And so I think if we keep them
moving, keep them out of town, keep them on their
way to home (where they should be) so that they can get their homework done and other things done around the house, then I think it will help.
The other issue is, as I said earlier, reliability.
A number of parents have in dicated over the years
that the buses are full and so they bypass some of the bus stops where the students are waiting for them to
get to school. And as I said earlier, we need to ensure
that our children are not compromised because of the
challenges faced by the scheduling and the number of
buses that we have available for the community.
The other issue is sidewalks, and walking
along the road. I ride a bike to work every day and I
see a number of children walking to school. Some
children are as young as five years old and they are
walking by themselves. I just get concerned when I
see them walking along the road and there is no
sidewalk. In fact, again, when I was the Minister of the
Environment, I was coming along North Shore Road and I saw that the sidewalk was all overgrown. I called
the people in Parks and said, I need these sidewalks
done immediately because if any child can’t walk on a
sidewalk, and walks in the road and gets killed or has an accident, then, to me, it would be devastating and
it will not be good enough and it would reflect badly on
this Government, or any Government. So, to me, it is
crucial that we have these sidewalks cared for.
I have to give the current Minister kudos in
that I have been looking at these sidewalks and they
are i n fairly decent condition. So I give the current
Minister kudos for the work that he has done to date.
The other issue is the crossings. I see that
most of the schools have guards there to help our
1788 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly young people cross major roads. Again, I think it is
money well spent and they should be recognised for
the work that they do. I believe that all schools should
have guards for all major crossings if they are close to
any school.

[Pause]

Okay. I have spoken about
the one car per family. I would like to basically talk
about taxis a bit, Mr. Speaker.
The issue of taxis is a very interesting one b ecause taxi drivers are not a harmonious group. Some
taxi drivers drive a taxi because that is their profession. Some taxi drivers drive a taxi because they want to get out of the house. Some taxi drivers drive a taxi
because they want to make a contribution to tourism.
They are retired from their other careers, and so they
say, Okay. Well, this is my contribution. I am doing it. I
make a little change here because it is something that
I wanted to do to help Bermuda. So the motivations
for driving taxis are different. Therefore, when you try
to get the taxi drivers together it becomes challenging
because they are all in it for different reasons.
I am not saying that one reason is better than
the other; the reasons are different. As a cons equence, we have to somehow bring all of them to the same page, and get the same level of commitment to
ensure that the industry improves and that everyone
buys in on what is the best way to move forward for
the industry in regard to legislation and regulations.
One thing the report raised that I found was
quite appropriate was the issue of having debit card
and credit card [machines] in our taxis. I travel quite a
bit, and I noticed that taxis, almost everywhere, have
credit card and debit card machines in them. In fact,
someone, an executive of a bank, told me that once a
millennial who . . . you know, a very successful mi llennial who is a CEO of a business in New York City,
came down and had no cash. He only had his debit
card. He got into the taxi, went to Southampton Pri ncess, and the driver said . . . say it was $60 or $70.
So the tourist said, Well, I have no cash. I
can’t give it to you. I can give you my debi t card.
[The taxi driver said], Well, we don’t have de bit card [machine]. We need cash.
That, to me, is an indication that we have to
move ahead with the times. That young man had to
call his father to see who on the Island (because it
was Sunday eveni ng) he knew who would, basically,
provide this man with some cash to pay this taxi dri ver.

[Crosstalk]

But anyway, the guest got
the cash and paid the taxi driver. So I am saying this,
you know, Come on, taxi drivers. We have to get with
it. I think it is time that we put infrastructure in place that will allow these drivers to have debit card and
credit card [machines] in their taxis.
Uber and other such carriers, I will leave that
one alone because I have heard so many positive and
negative comments on these Uber -type services that I
would let the Government do their own research. I
have heard a lot of positive things about Uber and
Uber drivers, and I have heard negative things. I think
the issues are around vetting the drivers , vetting the
suitability of the vehicles, setting the standards for these types of licences (if they are issued), and standards of performance and conduct. So, to me, if
we are going to go down this route, we need to make
sure that we have adequate and sufficient regulations
in place in regard to the drivers, the vehicles, and the
code of conduct that is required for having these veh icles. Because I know, I speak to many taxi drivers in
London and they will give you an earful if you mention
the word “Uber. ” And it is the same thing in Canada.
And then, you know, I read stories . . . when I
was in South Africa, Uber drivers having their passengers’ lives threatened. So, again, we have to be very careful, and I ask the Government [that] if they go
down this route, [to] do their research. Assess the
risks associated with this business and make sure that
at the end of the day we come out with a product that
is safe, reliable, and improves the services offering of
our public vehicles.
Minibuses: As I said, minibuses create jobs
and I am a proponent of minibuses if they are well -
regulated and if we have a proper plan for them being integrated into our transportation network. As I said, the minibuses can supplement and complement the
existing public service vehic les and public service
transportation that we have from the East End of the Island to the West End, from the ferries to the buses.
And for the harder -to-reach remote areas, they can do
circular routes and pick up those people who live in
areas where it is difficult to access the public transpor-tation. So I think there is a role for them. Again, they
can also be used in the school routes on a more regular basis. Again, another opportunity for the minibus
drivers.
As was said in the report, right now, becaus e
of the challenges we have with the number of buses that we have in our fleet, and the number of buses on
our roads, the minibuses are used to service our
guests who arrive by ship. Again, Mr. Speaker, I believe that these minibuses basically can be the s aviour
for our public transportation system, and it can be an avenue whereby our young people can basically start their business and be entrepreneurial. So I would e ncourage that we basically set some framework around
minibuses and work with the minibus dr ivers so that
they can be integrated into the transportation network
with the public vehicles. Because if we have an eff icient transportation system, and efficient transport ation hubs, then I think it will work well for everyone.


Bermu da House of Assembly When I talk about the net work, the integrated
network, I also like to extend it to not only just minibuses, but the Park N Ride services and infrastructure. Again, keeping people out of the city, be it is St. George’s or Hamilton, people would be willing to park their cars out on the public docks in Southampton,
and Warwick, and Smith’s, and Hamilton Parish if
there was a proper infrastructure for them to leave
their cars and motorcycles and also pick up other pu blic transportation or minibuses on a regular and reli able basis. I know for a fact ––I mean, I have a car and I
hardly ever use it. And when I come to town on the
weekend, I never ever bring my car to Hamilton on the
weekend. I ride my bike, because I can find a parking spot and I can get close to where I want to go. As far
as the car is concerned, there is always [the problem
of finding] parking and meters, and you know, you
drive around and around, and there is congestion. So,
I believe that if we have a stronger Park N Ride infr astructure and support system that we can alleviate
some of the traffic that is currently plaguing our cities,
Hamilton and sometimes St. George’s. You heard the
Member from [constituency] 1 talk about congestion in
the square in St. George’s. So, I think this could be a
means of helping to fight c ongestion.
I spoke about the minicars. Yes, I believe in
them; there could be opportunities.
Electrical cars [EVs] and hybrids. I embrace
the recommendations that are here. The challenge
that we have is ensuring that the infrastructure to support these electrical vehicles and hybrid vehicles is in
place in this country. In addition, the issue is cost. Hopefully as time passes the cost of the electrical v ehicles will be reduced. Because on page 93 of the r eport it says, “Current pricing of EVs in Bermuda i s 1.5
to two times more than that of similarly sized internal combustion engine vehicles. ”
Now, Mr. Speaker, I bought a car last year
because my car died after 20 years, and, as I am tall , I
needed a larger car. So, I said, Let me see what’s
available. When I saw the price of a . . . and you
know, I am environmentally conscious and, you know,
I am for the environment. And when I saw the price of
an electric vehicle for a car that would suit my size,
and then I saw a car that size, [an internal] combus-tion vehicle, to me, unfortunately, there was no choice
because I was paying almost double for the electric
vehicle.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
First, I want to thank the committee and persons who put together this Transportation Green P aper because I know it was a hefty task and they did
such a wonderful job in accumulating all this data and
information, so for that we are thankful.
I wan ted to touch on four areas in this Green
Paper, and those are minibuses, commercial trucks,
the East End transport, and of course, accessibility
transportation. As I was going through this pretty long paper, it is definitely a step in the right direction w hen
you see the term “differently abled” used multiple
times throughout this document. So it is definitely an
issue or something I am hoping that our community and our Government is wanting to address, the transportation for the differently abled population. But more
to that, I mean, this issue is so very important it brings
to mind at one point when we started to hear the outcries from our community in regard to the inconsiste ncy of the bus schedule and routes. I think I remember
hearing a little boy, how he made a song about how inconsistent the bus scheduling was. And then also
incidents where we saw mechanical issues with buses
carrying school children. And so it is a significant concern, and we do [need to] hash out many concerns
that are included in this Green Paper.
I want to start with the commercial trucks.
There is a small segment on page 11 in regard to commercial trucks and the concerns centred on the
truck size and weight as there are now more trucks on
the Island and they carry heavy items and they da mage our roads and our bridges. But not only that, Mr. Speaker, there are times when some of these com-mercial vehicles are carrying loads that are much
heavier than what they are supposed to be carrying
and so there is . . . I do not know if anyone studies
these trucks, but they have something on them called
. . . help me out . . . load end . . . tare load?

Tare load, yes.

1790 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Mrs. Tinee Furbert: And so there is actually a capac ity in which these trucks are able to carry and a lot of
times they are definitely carrying more than their load,
and they are not even securing the items that are in their trucks. You see trees all hanging off, and we have actually seen incidents where people have recorded actual accidents that have occurred because
things have flown off of these vehicles. So it is my
hope that we do address these concerns so that it
does not cause a tragedy to someone in our comm unity. We just need to get a little bit stricter with enforcement when it comes to what loads these trucks
are actually supposed to be carrying.
I also want to thank . . . I was just reading, or I
noticed in one of the explanatory notes, that there
were a number of persons who responded to the
Transport survey. Actually, 65 per cent of those persons were f emale, and 35 [per cent] of those persons
were male. So I want to thank all the women who took
the time to actually respond to this survey. I do not
know if they are the majority of the transportation us-ers, but we want to thank the women for taking the
time to answer the questions as it related to the Green
Paper and Transportation survey.
So I am going to move right along to the accessibility . . . sorry, before I get to accessibility, I do
want to address the East End bus service.
One of the questions that I currently get when
I am out canvassing is, How are you going to address the issue with transportation to the St. David’s area?
Because this is an area which is not serviced enough,
with the frequency, and it is actually one of the areas
that becomes least frequently travelled when we are experiencing issues with the mechanics of the buses.
And so one of my colleagues has mentioned already
in regard to the service of buses to the East End, particularly all the other small areas in which buses ca nnot get to. It is a significant concern, particularly to the
residents of St. David’s. So, we hope that when our
fleet is better complemented that the . . . whether it is
through regular buses or whether it is through minibuses that this issue is addressed, because I believe
there is supposed to be even more development go-ing on in that area, particularly around the Battery area, which will mean there will be an increase in pe ople. So those persons will need access to transport ation. So the hope is that we can highly consider proper
transportation out to St. David’s.
I do want to thank the Paradise transportation
company that is currently providing transportation to
the St. David’s area. I frequent out there quite a bit, so
I do get to see them transporting clie nts in and out of
St. David’s and even in the St. George’s area, so we
want to give great thanks to them for being able to
provide that service to the residents. I think they have
definitely complemented a short fall in regard to trans-portation to the resi dents in St. David’s. So, I would
just like to thank them and congratulate them for providing that service to our residents in the St. D avid’s area.

[Pause]

So now I am just going to go on
to accessibility transport, which is something that is
very important to me.
The other day I was in a nursing home and I
was talking to a former
. . . well, retired senior PTB
manager. He is now wheelchair bound. When I first
saw him he was in sort of a bucket chair, and in this
bucket, sort of whee lchair, he is unable to propel hi mself independently. Then he moved from one facility to another and we were able to get him the proper
wheelchair that was suitable for him. And now with his
new wheelchair he is able to mobilise and move hi mself around the facility.
I remember having a conversation with him
and I said, Well, what accessible buses or accessible
transport, is this important to you?
And he said, Well, you know, today I never
thought about it, but yes, it is important.
So something that was never really thought
about is now becoming a more important and relevant
issue. Particularly as our disabled population does
increase in Bermuda, it is vital and important that we
allow mobility within our community. Some of you may
see persons . . . because that is not actually in this
paper, but we see persons more frequently in our
community using power chairs, or using scooters, and they are driving around the roads. Power chairs or
scooters are not necessarily intended for road use;
they are actually i ntended for short distances within
neighbourhoods or around stores or grocery stores.
That is what they are intended to be used for, or on
sidewalks, but we are actually seeing the use of these vehicles . . . sorry, not vehicles, these power chairs
and scooters on the road. And sometimes you may
find yourself behind someone, you know.
But it is a very unfortunate situation because if
they had access to proper public transportation then
we would have [fewer] power chairs and scooters ha ving to drive around on our roads. So, I do not want us
to limit [them] because right now they do not have any
other choice. Those ones who are very active and
want to maintain an active lifestyle should have some option or some way of being able to get around the
community when the options right now are very nil.
I would also just like to speak to having visited
some of the other islands and seeing what accessible
options there are for persons with disabilities or wheelchair users. And, you know, I have seen . . . you
order a taxi, you order a minivan and they come and
they roll out their ramp and you can just wheel right up
into the truck, and some places even, you know, you
have access to a companion if you want to. I have
seen this in the other islands, Mr. Speaker. So my
hope is that we will see this as an important issue to


Bermu da House of Assembly be able to address for both our locals and our visitors
alike.
There is one particular issue that I would like
to bring to mind, and that is within the realm of financial assistance. We know that most of our financial
assistance users are our seniors and our persons with
disabilities. However, there is an allowance in the F inancial Assistance regulations that speaks to transportation, but that is public transportation. So there is
an allowance in the F inancial Assistance regulations
that speaks to public transportation. So if the majority
of our users are seniors and persons with disabilities
on financial assistance, then they definitely can access public transportation. So what are we going to do
about allowing an allowance for other modes of transportation, if the public transportation system is not g oing to allow them to take advantage of that particular transportation? I think that we need to make changes
to that Financial Assistance regulation allow ance to be
able to allow persons to have access to some mode of
transportation.
Also, I wanted to bring up the issue of dis abled parking bays and permits, because it is ad-dressed in this Green Paper. There is a social media
site called “Parking Badly” and many times you see on
this site people posting pictures of vehicles parked in
disabled parking spots which are not supposed to be parked there, Mr. Speaker. That even occurs on our
House grounds sometimes where we have [owners of]
vehicles who are inconsi derate of persons with dis abilities, parking in disabled vehicle spots.
This paper has outlined very clearly and made
suggestions in regard to how we can actually address this issue. What the public is saying is that we need to
deter people from parking i n disabled bays by increasing the fine, also establish better enforcement for di sabled parking spaces, install cameras and clamping
mechanisms to be able to catch offenders who illegally park. This is not something to take lightly, Mr.
Speaker. It is a lot of work having to take someone
who is in a wheelchair or a power chair and be able to
unload them from the vehicle. Actually, you need quite
a . . . if it is a back loader, you need quite a bit of
space in the back to be able to load someone off saf ely.
The hope is that with disabled parking bays
you can get them as close to the facility or the place in
which you are trying to get to, and that is the aim of a
disabled parking spot. There are disabled parking
spots around our City of Hamilton, and in readi ng
through this paper we do note that there are increas-ingly more of the disabled spots throughout the City of Hamilton. So we are also grateful that someone had
some insight to be able to provide more disabled par king spots throughout the City of Hamilton . I do notice
that throughout our community that there are more
disabled parking spots, but probably not nearly
enough as there should be. In September of 2017, the Disability Advisory
Council had a town hall [meeting] on accessible
transportation. I just wanted to share, if I can, Mr.
Speaker, some concerns that they actually had. Some questions that they had were: Who can or cannot op-erate an accessible vehicle? How does one prove the
ability to drive? What protocols do physicians follow to
determine who can or cannot drive?
They wanted us to note that there were limited
choices when it does come to taxi transportation, and
it is not economical for users to be able to use taxis that are for disabled users. There is no centralised
way to provide info on o ptions for transportation.
Some vehicle owners said they were bringing
in vehicles for persons with disabilities, and the taxes are waived on [such] vehicles, but then they actually
never use the vehicles as intended. And that is very important. I believe it highlights in this paper that if
minibuses are going to be allowed or given permission
to [be brought] in as accessible vehicles that they are
somehow labelled so that people know that this is the
intention of this minibus, to be able to provide assi stance for persons with disabilities.
Somebody just showed me a picture of a v ehicle in a disabled spot that is not supposed to be there. It is a police vehicle.

[Laughter]

So we seriously, seriously, ser iously need to respect this, because we do not know
what our condition is going to be like one day, and we
ourselves might need to have access to a disabled
parking spot.
But I will continue with what some of the
community had expressed in the town hall meeting
held in September 2017. Some solutions that they
wanted to provide or to share were to hold people who
obtained the PC licences and accessible vehicle per-mits accountable, hold them accountable and provide
more standardised identical takes of accessible veh icles. I do see that some vehicles out there have the
symbol of a wheelchair, but not all of them are stand-ardised. So we should standardise them so we know
who is to have permission to carry those persons with disabilities.
To enforce parking spaces, support the City of
Ham ilton with the proposed legislation, provide subs idy programmes, centralise our resources so that it is
easy to determine what is available for persons with
disabilities, keep an up- to-date record of the number
of accessible vehicles on the roads so that T ransport
Control Department can determine what we need. We
need to be able to equip persons with disabilities dri ver’s assessments. There are occupational therapists
who are available to assist with this, where they can
actually assess someone who may find themselves
with a disability, whether it be through a stroke or
some other neurological condition. Because som e1792 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly times we think that persons with disabilities, once they
acquire a disability, they will have no function in our
community thereafter. But we ar e able to rehabilitate
people so that they are able to drive thereafter, and there are all sorts of accommodations and modific ations that can be done to a vehicle to be able to allow
persons with disabilities the ability to drive again.
The other thing t hat was important was to
provide training programmes for those persons who do drive accessible vehicles and making sure that
they are trained with mental health first aid. I know that mental health is an important topic particularly
with clients . . .sorry , users using the bus and the dri vers not knowing how to manage. There are resources
that are out there. There is the Mental Health First Aid programme, which is down through the Mid- Atlantic
Wellness Institute. There is Action on Alzheimer’s & Dementia. T here is the Ageing and Disability Services
and there is also the Bermuda Society for the Blind.
Those are just a few to name. There are many more
organisations that can perhaps help those persons who have accessible vehicles and are driving our pu blic memb ers.
Some years ago there was a a paratransit
report that was done for Bermuda, a very expensive
one, and hefty . . . and I do not know how we can fulfil
that demand right now. But there is information out
there in regard to a paratransit system that is probably
the best option for us for our disabled population in
Bermuda.
But there definitely needs to be a needs assessment. I [read] in the report in regard to a registry
so that we can collect data to find more closely what that need is when it comes to transportation with persons with disabilities. Because it was interesting, by
reading this report, that we did not get too many persons with disabilities actually participating in the actual
surveys. So that needs assessment, or that national
registry, is very vital in being able to collect such data.
So there is a question that we have to pose
and that is: Is transportation for special needs a right
or a privilege? And just like any person is afforded the
opportunity to be able to ride public transportat ion,
then that right should be able and be extended to persons with disabilities. There are people who are captive in their own homes because they are unable to get about because there is no mechanism for transportation for them in the public. This also af fects our
students.
[In] reading this report it is noted that the m ajority of public transportation users are our students
and our visitors. There are students in our communi-ties who have disabilities who do not have access to
public transportation. The Ministry of Education does
provide a bus system for some students to get to
schools and day programmes, but we are also having issues with those by not taking into consideration
proper maintenance programmes or taking into consideration budgeting for mainta ining the fleet or buying a new fleet for our students so that they can also have
the right to transportation so that they can get to
school.
So some of their concerns, again, which I rei terated, students with special needs, they have com-munity -based ins tructions as part of their curriculum
and they would like to be able to get out to those pr ogrammes. There also needs to be proper training in regard to the use of accessible vehicles. I have seen
times where wheelchairs have been in some of the
minibuses and they are not secured properly. And I
have seen accidents where the driver will go around
the corner, and because there is no proper secur ement system in place, I have seen chairs actually tip
over. I have seen guests, visitors, who visit Bermuda
who ha ve scooters and they go into these vehicles
and they actually tip over . . . and end up having to go
to our hospital.
So there needs to be proper securement sy stems, particularly for wheelchairs, so that they are not able to move or shift when there is a sudden stop or
where we are having to turn a sharp corner. We have
many sharp corners in Bermuda, and so securement
and training of that is very important for transportation.
And I would also just like to skip to minibuses
as well, because someone had mentioned before (I
believe the Opposition Leader) in regard to transport ation services that give children rides to school, or afterschool pickup as well. Right now it is not mandated
that children wear seatbelts in the minivans. And, I
mean, I have seen jus t driving on the road, observing
some of the children in the minivans. They are stan ding up and they are having a good old time. And
should something happen where they have to stop
short, children are going to go flying.
And so it is very important that even if there is
no securement or seatbelt policy as it relates to seatbelts in minivans, that there should be because we
want to be able to protect our children when they are riding in minivans, or at least the driver should make
sure that they are seated at all times, and that should
be important to them to maintain their safety.
I just want to add, Mr. Speaker, in regard to
accessibility because there are some recommendations I am hoping that we can definitely push for. And that is, I hope that our Government can definitely push
for greater fines for persons who are parking in dis abled parking bays, Mr. Speaker. It is very important.
And also encourage minibus operators who receive
permits and licences for wheelchair accessible veh icles that they will be encouraged to establish a booking or dispatch service for prearranged transport. We are hoping that this can come into play.
[We are] also hoping that proper training and
standards needed for drivers of public service vehicles are provided, that they are able to have sensitivity
training or even know how to help persons using accessible vehicles so that they are driven around saf eBermu da House of Assembly ly, and that we can address this provision in the F inancial Assistance regulations.
There is one thing I would also like to m ention
and that is there is a bus route to Mid- Atlantic Wellness Institute (MAWI) . . . but it only has two runs.
There is one in the morning and one in the afternoon,
and then it stops. We have a hospital, King Edward
VII Memorial Hospital [KEMH], where w e have constant transportation and frequency of buses going directly . . . I mean, you walk a couple of steps and you
are right there and the hospital is there. Right? And so
it is unfair that we do place more significance on
transportation to our local hospital, King Edward,
which provides physical care, but there is less of a
significance to have access to public transportation to our Mid- Atlantic Wellness Institute. And so it is my
hope that we can provide some sort service as well where there are more f requent visits or opportunities
for transportation, whether it is through a minibus service, whether it is through public transportation bus
service, that these same persons who have to use the services of the Mid- Atlantic Wellness Institute, also
have the opportunity to be able to get to Mid- Atlantic
Wellness Institute whatever the time of the day they
need to.
So, I just want to add that I am hopeful and
grateful that this paper is complete. It is a lot of information. I think that if anyone has the time to delve
through it and read through it, it is definitely a lot of
information and a lot of good things can come out of
this. It is just my hope that we continue to highlight the
importance of fixing our transportation industry which
provides mobility for all of our public persons and users of the public transportation system, and also that
we use this as an opportunity to address accessible
transportation in our community.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First, I would like to thank everybody
who was involved with putting together this report. It
was extensive. Obviously, a lot of work went into get-ting the information that we have been provided. The
thing that is interesting about transport is that most of
the time people do not think about it until it is som ething that is not working, until it is something that is
frustrating us.

Mm-hmm. Mr. Ben Smith: The situation is . . . you know, recently we heard about the buses a lot because that has
been something that has been causing frustration,
and it has been a difficult thing for everybody to try to
come up with a solution that was going to work. As we know, with different kinds of vehicles and the different
pieces that have been discussed about how we solve
that problem, it is just interesting that when you have
the opportunity to look through a document like this
that shows all the potential solutions to a lot of the
problems, these problems really get discussed by all of us at some point, depending on what the frustration
is for us.
So I am just going to take this opportunity to
go through a couple of the specific things that I know I
myself have gone through over the last couple of
years, and piggyback on some of the things that we have already heard today, specific ally, starting with
the buses.
You know, if you drive a car, most of the time
you are not really thinking about the bus. And I am one of those people. But when my car is in the shop, I have to take a bus. And, to be honest with you, on the
bus from Southampton into Hamilton, I actually
thought it was a really good experience. The bus was
on time. It was a smooth ride. So, for me, the exper ience was really good. So going forward, I have my car, the next day and I do not think about the bus.
But then recent ly I had some people come in
to visit. And they travel quite a bit around the world
and they are used to using buses. So, for them, it was
not a big deal to try to do tours all around the Island using the bus service. The problem was that their experience was not the experience that I had. They were
seeing long delays, not getting the bus to pick them up because, at the time, I believe, we were going
through some real struggles with the scheduling, and
what it meant was that sometimes we would have to
send somebody to go and pick them up and take them
to their destination. Well, it is an interesting convers ation when you are dealing with a visitor and they are
saying, You know, this seems like a basic thing for us
to get public transportation, and here we ar e having to
struggle. And then explain that to a visitor.
So, with that first -hand knowledge, when you
hear the struggle of people trying to get from point A
to point B, and using the bus service, I think that any
solutions that we can put together that wi ll alleviate
some of these problems, and kind of put us in a situ ation where we are more environmentally friendly,
where we are also looking for a system that is going to be reliable . . . I believe it was MP Swan that spoke
earlier about some of the early runs.
Specifically, you have people who do shift
work who do not have access to that bus that would
get them there on time to go to an early job, or som etimes late at night. When you are in other jurisdictions,
you can actually get on a bus at any time during the
day. So, if you are an elderly person who needs to go
1794 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly to an appointment or, you know, we have people who
are working late into the night and now the only option
for them is to get a taxi, where we all know that the
difference between a taxi fare and a bus fare is quite
significant. If you are somebody who is used to riding
a bus, potentially, some of those kind of outside- thenorm schedules could be important to the workers and
to some people where that is their mode of transport ation from one end of the Island to the other.
Moving on to the taxi industry, as I just started
to kind of touch on it, I guess I will start with the sobr iety checkpoints. I guess starting with the point that
really we are trying everything we can to stop people
from drin king and driving. This is a great initiative, but
the side of it that is important is, how are we going to
make sure that people have a way to get home safely
if they go out?
The difficulty is that we have a system that we
already know is stretched. So, i f you are going to go
out to dinner and you make an appointment because,
you know, that is how you do it. If you have a reserv ation at 7:30 and you are going to say, okay, you are
going to call a taxi. I want the taxi to pick me up at
seven o’clock, there is going to be four of us, and we
are trying to go to this place. And then the taxi does
not arrive, and you are calling again and again. And
now it is 7:30 and now you are arriving to your dest ination late. Your whole evening has changed because
of a situ ation which is completely out of your control.
But there are two things that happen. Either people
then say, Well, maybe I am just going to drive my car,
which is the opposite of what we are trying to do. Or,
they are actually going to say, Well, I am not going to
go out because I do not want to deal with the frustr ation, so I am going to have people over to my house.
Right?
Now, that’s fine. But what impact is that ha ving on our hospitality industry? Right? We have a lot
of Bermudians who are working in t hat industry, and it
is actually an important part of our workforce. So, if people are making a decision to not go out because
they do not have reliable transportation to get them
home safely, what impact is that having on restau-rants and bars? And maybe i t is an interesting piece
just to know what that number is, if there has been an impact.
And specifically, on the taxi side of that, r ecently we went out and . . . exactly what I was referring to. Right? So you make the appointment, you go for dinner, and we had that problem in the beginning,
where the taxi did not come at the right time. And then at the end of the evening when you are trying to get home, because there are not a lot of taxis out and
about, so what is happening now is that there is a 45
minu te [to] an hour delay at the end of the evening
when everybody in the restaurant is cleaning up and
trying to go home because you do not have a vehicle.
The vehicle that you are expecting you cannot have
access to. Obviously, that is a challenge that befor e, when people did not think about it and just got in their
vehicle, was not an issue that we are dealing with at
the level that we are presently.
So in the conversation, with the taxi driver
who actually picked us up on the way there, his com-ment to me was that this run that he was doing . . . he
stepped in for another taxi driver. He picked us up and
he dropped us to the restaurant. But during that time
we had a really good conversation with him about kind
of how business was going and what he was seeing in
the taxi industry. And what he said was that this run
that he was doing was just so that he could pay for
gas, because he actually was not going to be driving
that day.
Well, that is a difficult thing. Right? Because if
they are supposed to be on the r oad for 16 hours a
day, and you have a taxi driver that is pretty much
telling you that [his] taxi is not going to be on the road,
when you look at that number of . . . I think it is 590
taxis, is that a real number? Are all of those taxis ac-tually being utilised at the level that they are supposed
to be. So, if they are not, what you are really looking at is a much smaller number. So, now not only do you
have to go out and get more taxis because we prob ably do not have a sufficient fleet totally, but we ha ve to
figure out how we get the taxis that are supposed to be on the roads, actually on the road.
So that is a two- part issue which, obviously, is
a difficult one to deal with because you have to have some kind of system which lets you know whether
these t axis are on the road. And then you have to
have everybody buy in to the fact that they have to be
part of that system, which is never going to be an
easy subject to deal with. But, obviously, having a
Green Paper that starts to discuss the fact that we
need all of these options and how we are going to fix it
is an important one.
Still talking on taxis, but I guess it is just
transportation in a kind of overall range, both the
Members from constituency 1 and 2 were talking specifically about St. George’s, but I recently was in
Dockyard at Bone Fish. So we are out to dinner and
we are all having a good time, and it is at the end of
the service time. And what happened was, there is
actually a group of visitors sitting at a different table. They have called a t axi; no taxi is going to come to
Dockyard at that time. There is no bus service for
them. So now you actually have a group of visitors
that are there, and they are stuck at one end of the
Island. So what ended up happening was, after a long
discussion, we took them. We drove them into town.
But in the conversation we realised that what
has happened a lot of times, is that people who are
working in these restaurants are actually giving these
people a ride because there is no other option for
them. Well, the difficulty is, does this stop people from
actually going to Dockyard? And . . . you know, I
mean, there are great facilities at both ends of our Island, but if we are not giving people an opportunity


Bermu da House of Assembly to have transportation to these parts of the Island it
makes it very difficult for us to support them.
There has been a bit conversation today
about the addition of the Twizy, the minicars. I believe the Minister actually spoke to it on Let’s Talk , and he
spoke specifically about . . . you know, I think a lot of
people are supportive of it, but there is also the frus-tration of you drive into town and there is a little car in
a big bay, right? So there is some kind of information
and some talking about what that is going to look like
if you continue to increase that number.
But on the flip side of that is the safety issue.
So, I know everybody here has seen a tourist on a
bike who was probably given a very short kind of
demo on how to ride a bike, riding around Bermuda,
and you are saying to yourself, There is no possible
way this person should be on a bike. Like, it is a da nger to them; it is a danger to anybody else who is
around them. And, really, what kind of experience is
[it] when that person [falls] off the bike and they get
the famous road rash of Bermuda? That is what they are taking back with them.
The Twizy option moves away from that. It
gives them . . . because most of the time they are going to come here . . . they have driven a car. But they
might not even have ridden a pedal bike for a long time. And now they are on this bike on narrow roads,
not fully understanding kind of how we use our vehicles, and it puts them in a difficult spot.
Well, when you think of that concept you
move it toward what we see with our young people. So, Project Ride has done a really good job of trying
to prepare our young people to be on the bikes and how they can be as safe as possible and all the rest of
it. But there have to be parents who are thinking to
themselves, Wouldn’t it be better for me to put my
child in one o f these vehicles rather than have them
on a bike? Because the danger of it . . . and ever ybody here probably has some kind of mark on them
from when they were 16, 17 years old and they came
off their bike at some point.
But it is one thing if it is just a little road rash; it
is another thing when you have broken something or
you have injured yourself significantly worse, or obv iously, the road fatalities that we are having on our roads on an ongoing basis. If we can do anything to prevent that it is impor tant that this is what we are
looking to do.
On our roads, specifically when it comes to
just how people are treating our roads, I think it is i mportant for all of us, at any opportunity we can, to just talk to young people about how they are acting on our roads. The Opposition Leader spoke to something
that I personally have seen several times. Just people
riding around, popping a wheelie on a public road,
riding along, and it is as if they are just playing a game while there is regular traffic around them. It is a very
dangerous thing to do. But they do not seem to un-derstand that they are on a public road and it should
not happen.
But it is part of a bigger issue, because you
see people doing things on the road that they know
they should not be doing. So, you are on your cell phone and you are driving with one hand while you
are talking on the cell phone and paying attention to
what is on the phone call instead of the road.
You see people riding around on a bike with
their helmet undone and their cell phone shoved up
inside of the helmet. The second that the cell phone shifts, they are going to grab the cell phone. It is automatic. And then they are going to come off the bike
and they are going to wonder what happened.
But this is just the behaviour that has become
the norm. When you see a yellow light, you run it. The
person behind you actually sees a red light. Well, they are going to follow you. That is the behaviour that has
become the norm instead of the exception, and the
more that it is the norm, t he more we have all of the
accidents. And then we wonder why the fatalities are
so high, and we wonder why we have more people ending up in the hospital with injuries. All of those
things are adding to our health cost.
So, if we can come up with ways of tr ying to
educate people, and trying to figure out a way to make
things safer, then I think having the cams on the road
that are going to test for speeding and potentially send somebody a ticket in the mail because they were running a red light or [not] havi ng due care. I think an ything we can do to try and curb that behaviour, I think
we should be doing.
I guess, overall, I would say that the ideas
coming from the report are important. I think you have heard from several of our Members, and I am going to
echo it, the hard part is, as you have heard different
people speak today, everybody has their thing that they think is important. Right? And different speakers
have really honed in on what they think is important from out of this huge document. Well, I think it is important that we actually have a plan that leads to that,
and information that would tell us, Well, this is what
we think the priorities are. This is what we are going to
focus on first. Then, from that point, once those are
achieved, potentially we are going to move on to
these.
On one hand, with our tourism product, it is
going to be important that we are going to do things that are going to affect them. On the flipside of that,
the safety of our citizens is also going to be a priority.
So, if w e can potentially have a second thought of
moving from Green Paper to White Paper, so that we
have an idea of what the plan is, and that we can hold
everybody accountable to that plan, then I think that
this is a good idea and I do not see a reason why we
would not want to move in that direction.
So, Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to give a few
remarks and with that I will take my seat.

1796 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly The Speaker: Thank you, Honourable Member.
I recognise the Honourable Member from
constituency 22. Honourable Member Pearman, you
have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I think this debate has probably gone on longer than most people anticipated it would, but there is a
considerable amount of material in the Green Paper,
so with transport as our theme, let me just give a very
quick whistle -stop tour of 10 specific points. And I believe I am the last speaker on our side, so we can move along after this. But first and foremost, I also
thank those involved in preparing this. This is a pretty
hefty document wit h a lot of ideas, and I commend
those involved, including the Minister.
Second, I am delighted to see that this report
considers the role of differently able persons. They
are an element of our society who are often unheral ded and perhaps do not get the due regard that they
deserve, so I commend the report in that respect as well and I echo the comments made by the Honour able Member from St. George’s who spoke two speak-ers before me.
Third, I do note that this Green Paper envi sages ditching high- speed f erries and replacing them
with fast ferries. For those who are looking at the r eport, page 36 of the report speaks to that. My understanding, and it is really just anecdotal from speaking
to people who are involved in the ferries and Marine
and Ports, is t hat this is probably a good thing. And
the high- speed ferries were not very well suited to
Bermuda’s waters and would encounter difficulties. I
do not quite know what the difference is between a
high-speed ferry and a fast ferry, but no doubt we will
learn if this ditching of the high- speed ferries is pr ogressed.
I also just would pause quickly and echo the
sentiments of the Shadow Minister who spoke first for
us in the debate, Ms. Leah Scott, who suggested the
possibility of a ferry terminal at the airpor t. I do not
know how feasible that is. I do not know how much
that would cost. But it would be a lovely and charming way for people who are first setting foot on our islands
to get on board a boat to have the opportunity to go to
their hotel accommodation or elsewhere.
Fourth, and this has been a sad theme from
almost every speaker in this debate, and that is our
collective poor driving habits. We all know [this], and
yet nothing is done. I can think of only two things. One
is that as a society as a whole, we need to start thinking differently. We need to start approaching life di fferently. It is not a race. I mean, the number of times
that you are overtaken by someone, only then to be
parked behind them at the next red light, it is just st upid, and people are dying. We need to think differently
and encourage others to think differently.
I know that the Honourable Member, Mr. Cole
Simons, spoke about how minicars may be a safety option as well. And so I do hope . . . it wasn’t quite
clear from the report whether the word “not” or the word “now” was the correct word there, but if it is “not,”
I would invite the Minister and those involved to have
a little bit of a rethink because there is a safety el ement here. It is not just a matter of providing . . . (I
think someone referred to Twizys earlier) to our tourists, but it is also the possibility that people who are not safe or steady or accomplished or routinely accustomed to being on a bike, can travel around our I sland, whether they are residents or whether t hey are
foreigners, with a higher degree of safety. So, I think that is worth thinking about.
Fifth, as to the dark helmets, at page 72 of the
report, the Government says this . . . and this is a
Green Paper, I accept it is just proposals and suggestions . But it says, “the Ministry of Transport” . . . I am
quoting, with your leave, Mr. Speaker, paragraph
3.7.6.

“[The] Ministry of Transport will
seriously consider in light of the robberies that have taken place in broad daylight by persons wearing dark
visor helmets. ” Well, respectfully, and I mean this crit icism constructively, I think we are beyond the “ser iously considering” stage. Why don’t you just do som ething about it?
Six of ten, there is some delightful comm ents
and support of the Railway Trail, the Tracks, as most Bermudians like to refer to them, at page 125 and 127. Again, with your leave, Mr. Speaker —

—I was quite shocked to see at
page 125 of this report the fact that in a survey, and I
do not know how many people participated in this sur-vey, but some 22.59 per cent —I will repeat that,
22.59 per cent —so 23 per cent of people surveyed do
not use the Railway Trail. Well, if any of them are li stening, let me commend the Railway Trail, the Tracks,
to them. It is probably one of the nicest opportunities
to get out and see Bermuda and to get some exercise and be healthy in doing the same.
Seventh is on electric vehicles. This is an
amazing opportunity for our Island. We are in the lux urious position of having a small landmass, having a
relatively small population. We could, if we had the
vision and the determination, be a shining beacon to the rest of the world by having electric cars, and act ually, just having electr ic cars. And somewhere, I am
sure, there is an electric car company that would love the opportunity to have Bermuda as its testing ground,
or as its showcase. And so to the extent that that can
happen, I would encourage it. Not just for environmen-tal reasons, but also as an opportunity for Bermuda to
be a brand in that way on the world stage. That is


Bermu da House of Assembly dealt with at page 90 of the report, should anyone
wish to look.
Eight of ten, and that is taxis. That is also
dealt with at page 90, and with your leave, Mr . Speaker, paragraph 4.8.4, “ Government recognizes the i ssue surrounding the lack of taxis at certain times of
day . . . .” And again, it is constructive criticism. Well, it
is fine to recognise an issue, but we really need to
know what is going to be done about it.
Nine of ten, is the Minister’s comments on the
MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding, with Rocky Mountain, the electrical fleet. That is a great idea; a
great opportunity for Bermuda and hopefully we will
hear more about it from the Minister wh en he closes.
Because we have not really heard much about it since
the original announcement. It would be wonderful to
see Bermuda take that road.
Tenth, and finally, and this too is criticism, but
I hope it is constructive criticism, and that is the fact
that at page 14 of the report, it explains why this is a
Green Paper, what a Green Paper is. Again, with your leave, Mr. Speaker, I quote, it is “T o offer options and
to pose questions . . . It is not a statement of Gover nment policy . . . .”
Many of the people who spoke earlier this afternoon have invited the Minister to rethink his oppos ition to providing a White Paper. And, respectfully, I think that is a good idea for two reasons. One it is that
we actually know where the Government is going to
go. It is not just a menu of opportunities; we know the
route they are taking. But secondly, as a matter of
good governance, it is sensible to have a White Paper
so Bermudians know where we are going. So, with those 10 whistle- stops along the way on the transportation tour, I believe I am the last speaker for this side,
and thank you, Mr. Speaker.

You get it in Barbados.
You get it in . . . somewhat, in Jamaica in Kingston.
But outside of those islands, you are on your own.
You have got to pay for private transportation. Now,
there are going to be those who say, Well, that takes
a strain off of the government’s budget. But what it
also does is has an impact on peop le’s pocket. B ecause as we know, when you pay for private transportation, it is much higher.
So, the first question we have to ask ourselves is, Do we want to keep providing transportation for our people? The word I want to use, “affordable”
transportation. The answer is yes. Then there come
the critics in the budget who say, What about the
costs? We heard earlier the figures, what we are taking in, what we are paying out. It looks kind of daunt-ing. But let’s go by the fact that we are going to con-tinue.
1798 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Mr. Speaker, do you know that the gover nment of the British Virgin Islands have studied our
public transportation system so much that they want
to come here and look at what we are doing right,
what we are doing wrong, and they want to modify that for their own country which has no public transportation. People down there, after certain hours of
the night, have zero chance of getting home. They
have to walk. Or they have to pay almost extortiontype [fees] for taxi drivers.
So I want people to bear in mind that Berm uda is one of the few islands that has public transport ation and it does come with a cost. Mr. Speaker, we
heard about tourism numbers, so I am not going to go
over that. But the fact is, in order to move our tourists around this Island, we need public transportation that
is heavily subsidised. In order to move our people in
and out of small areas like Spanish Point [and] Pr ospect, we need transportation. But do we need big
buses? Do we need a half a million- dollar bus to do
that, to carry 10, 15 people? No. So, I support the fact
that we are possibility looking at public minibuses.
Because that would service the areas like the St. D avid’s, the Ferry Reaches, the Pond Hills, the Pr ospects, the Spanish Points, the Knapton Hills, all of those things. So these are the things that we have to
be innovative with. One size does not fit all. Size does
matter.
In all of this, Mr. Speaker, I hear people talk,
but we have to understand. These buses do not drive
themselves, at least not yet. And they sure do not fix
themselves. So in all of this, we need to have skilled
professionals, Mr. Speaker —skilled professionals who
drive these buses and, more importantly, skilled pr ofessionals who service these buses. As we know,
about 5, 10 years ago we had a problem, and even
now, with these buses breaking down. So what did this Government have to do? We had to hire 10, 14
mechanics to keep our fleet up and running, or attempt to keep it up and running. We still do not have
enough.
Mr. Speaker, let me move on. The ferry sy stem, 10, 12 years ago, when Dr. Brown wanted to i ntroduce it, we had all these people complaining. We
don’t need no fast ferries. We don’t need this. This is
just spending money we don’t need [to].

[Inaudible interjections]

So, this was somewhere in
Southampton, Mr. Speaker. Not quite God’s country,
but on its way.
So anyway, I come off the hill, Scenic Heights
Pass and I am like, Wow! All these cars. Must be an
accident. And I said, Okay, well, I am going to ease up
by Burnt House Hill. I get by Burnt House Hill and
there are just as many cars. I am deciding, do I go Middle Road [or] do I go Burnt House Hill, Middle
Road? There is the same [number] of cars. So, I said,
Wow! Something must be happening in Crow Lane
why c ars are backed up. I finally got to work, late. And
I tell my boss, Yes, man, there must be some accident along the way coming from west.
So, I don’t know, a couple of nights later, the
same thing happened, and I am saying, It can’t be
another accident.

So anyway, Mr. Speaker,
what happened was that was when I realised this is
what people from the west have to deal with every day going to and from Hamilton. And I am saying, I could
never live up west because I can’t deal with this. I
would have road rage every moment.



Bermu da House of Assembly The Speaker: It’s scenic. You can enjoy the scenery
coming in, you know.

So, what’s my point, Mr.
Speaker? That was the year 1995. And when they
had the fast ferries put in place, I haven’t tested it out,
but I think the traffic load has gone down. My point,
Mr. Speaker, is that whether we have fast ferries,
high-speed ferries, slow -speed ferries, we need to
have ferries. It is a must, so I support that.
But, again, in the midst of this, these ferries
need to be maintained. We need to have adequate
staff. We need to have adequate access to parts. Let’s not forget the human part in this equation because these ferries do not drive themselves.

They will not servic e
themselves. Let me move on, Mr. Speaker.
Taxis. Mr. Speaker, I live in Friswell’s Hill, five
minutes from town. Five minutes. If I call a taxi right
now, I would probably be waiting an hour before a taxi
comes. That’s ridiculous . . . ridiculous. There is no
excuse. Taxis say, Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to
come to Friswell’s Hill. People may rob me. Oh, the
roads are too small for my H1 taxi. All sorts of excuses
why we cannot get a taxi. If I was sick and I needed to
get to the hospital, and I cal led a taxi, I would probably
be dead, or I would have to call an ambulance, and
then we run up health insurance bills. My point, Mr.
Speaker, is that I sympathise with taxi drivers because they have to work hard.

Well, if he comes there
and I am alive then he might just keep driving. You
know?
I sympathise with the taxi drivers; they have to
work hard. But I do not sympathise with them parked
up somewhere while Bermudians are calling looking for cabs, and you are telling me [there are] 550 on the
road, and somebody on Friswell’s Hill cannot get a
cab? No. Do I think we should go to Uber? No. Contrary
to what the Deputy Opposi tion Leader says —

[Inaudible interjections]

Okay. All right. I will check
that later on.
But anyway, the Uber model cannot work in
Bermuda, Mr. Speaker. The U ber model only serves
Uber. Uber drivers get robbed. Taxi drivers get
robbed. So what is the solution, Mr. Speaker? We
heard a proposal earlier this last week for 20 actual
permits with a possibility of actual 88. The taxi drivers got upset. Rightfully. Then we heard the price. On a verage, $5,000. Now, if I pay $5,000, but you paid
$100,000, you have a right to be upset. Let’s be real.
Because I am devaluing the value of you permit. But if
your $100,000 permit means that I am sitting myself up at Friswell’s Hill waiting, I do not care how much it
costs you. I really don’t!
So, rightfully, Bermudians are upset when
they call a taxi and they have to wait 20 or 30 minutes.
Rightfully they are upset when at three o’clock, when some people have come out of places —I did not say
“Place’s Place, certain places —and they cannot get a
taxi. Rightfully, the restaurant owners and bar owners
are upset when people stop coming out because they
cannot catch a taxi. So what is the solution?
The Transportation Minister, the H onourable
Zane De Silva, I do not know if he convened it or he was summoned, but 400 taxi drivers met with him up
at Warwick Workmans [Club] the other day.

[Inaudible interjections]

And he was there like in
the lion’s den, I wou ld say. But he stood his ground,
and he said to them, Shout. Carry on. I’m used to this
from Alaska Hall.
But my point, Mr. Speaker, was this here. He
laid down the law to them.
[He said] Listen , I am going to give you guys
time to get your act together, whether it is one group,
two groups, three groups, four groups —it doesn’t matter. You all have to get your act together because the
people are being neglected. And if the people are b eing neglected, the tourists are being neglected, we have to do someth ing. We cannot grow tourism; we
cannot grow the economy if people can’t get around.
If people come here, put our pictures on I nstagram, Facebook and whatever, and say ‘Oh, we
waited in long lines. We can’t even move.’ This, that
and the other. That can’t work! If our people in this
country are upset, something is wrong. We have to do
something about that.
1800 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Mr. Speaker, one night I was in St. George’s. I
am talking a little bit about St. George’s.

I was patronising a St.
George’s establishment.
I got a ride down and I said, Okay. I will catch
a taxi back. I will catch the bus back. Eleven o’clock
comes and I am standing b y the bus stop, no bus;
11:15, no bus; 11:45, no bus; twelve o’clock, no bus.
So for one hour I stood in the bus stop. I ended up
calling the taxi service. The taxi was like, Well, I don’t
know. You are all the way in St. George’s. So, from
the outset, the y gave me no hope. I sat there until one
o’clock in the morning.

[Inaudible interjections and laughter ]

I don’t even want to comment on that one.
I sat there until one o’clock in the morning
waiting for a taxi. In total time, t wo hours, whether it
was a bus or a taxi. No transportation.
The taxi guy came and said, Yeah, man, you
are lucky, man. I was at Crawl Hill so I picked up this
ride. How am I supposed to feel lucky? So I was lucky
I was not abandoned? That is how the transportation system collectively makes Bermudians feel, that, after
certain hours, you are lucky if you get a ride.
What if I was a young lady? Would I feel safe?
I do not know. So, these are things that this Green
Paper, and common sense prevailing, ne eds to address. Because there is no way you are going to tell me there is 400 taxis, 550 taxis, and somebody is
supposed to be waiting an hour for a taxi. Whether
you are five minutes from town or you are in St.
George’s, where are all these taxis? They ar e not on
Front Street, they are not at Friswell’s Hill, they are
not in St. George’s, where are they at? They are all
parked? Mr. Speaker, let me move on. I spoke about
what is in the report. I am going to speak briefly about
what is not in the report that should find itself in a report soon. I looked through the report and I saw not hing about the possibility of bringing in second- hand
cars from Japan. Think about it, Mr. Speaker. We
have a responsibility as a Government to bring down
the cost of living for people. As Honourable Cole S imons says, he went to price a car, a vehicle, because
his family is worried. And it was about $50,000 —
$50,000 —that money could put somebody through
university for two years, possibly. You could go online and you could find that same model vehicle, maybe one or two years earlier, for $5,000—landed in Bermuda, $5,000—one- tenth of the cost. One- tenth!
Now, who is this going to hurt? Who is this g oing to help? Let’s start with who it is going to help. The
single mother who needs t ransportation to take her
children around—$5,000 for a vehicle, a reliable veh icle. The senior who is retired. [He] cannot afford
$50,000, cannot afford $30,000. A $5,000 vehicle
could help him. Who else is it going to help? It is an
industry that we could create for young entrepreneurs,
who bring in second- hand vehicles, for a fraction of
the cost, and are able to sell these to Bermudians. We have to think about that. We have to be outside the
box. Over 10 years ago we thought outside of the box
when it came to fast ferries, and look at what it has
done. We have to think about that.
Now, there are going to be those who say,
Oh, but that is going to hurt the pockets of . . .. who?
Who is it going to hurt the pockets of? Those who already have. Right? There are going to be those who say, Oh, what about the import duty? Sometimes we
have to make a little sacrifice as a country to help
those in need. That is not in the report. And that is
something that we need to talk about.
What else am I going to talk about, Mr.
Speaker? I got a video; maybe a lot of people got a video. There is a car going the wrong way at Paget
stoplights. Who was in the car? Tourists. Little, small, mini rental car. I see provision in there for expanding
the possibility of rental cars, those small rental cars.
So my question is, Why aren’t we talking about regular rental cars? In every island in the Caribbean you can rent a regular car, but not in Bermuda. Why not?
Cannot use the excuse, Oh, the tourist wouldn’t know
which way they are going. They do not know which
way they are going on a bike anyway. Right? We do
not want tourist going back in a body bag or all bandaged all up. So why aren’t we talking about regular
rental cars?
Again, we have a responsibility as a Gover nment to help young entrepreneurs start a business.
They could bring in a second- hand car and use that
as a rental. It might cost you over $50,000 or
$100,000, properly insured, to start a rental car bus iness of 10 cars. Or are we just going to let those who
already have keep having more? Are we going to
keep letting our tourists get these road rashes? No,
we [are not]. We have to change that.
Another thing that I did not see addressed in
the report was abandoned vehicles, Mr. Speaker.
Abandoned vehicles fall under the Minist ry of Transportation. This year and last year I had to take pi ctures of approximately 10 vehicles —abandoned cars,
bikes —abandoned all around Devonshire, Back o’
Town. These cars have just been sitting there for
years in some cases. You go there, the car is ticketed,
how can you ticket an abandoned car? The people
ain’t coming back to pay the ticket!



Bermu da House of Assembly [Laughter and inaudible interjections ]

They abandoned it; it has
been there for years!
Now, some may say, There is a process.
Right. But there is also a thing called “a chassis number.” There is also a thing called “registration.” You look up a chassis number, or the engine block number, you know who that car belongs to. So if they cannot produce a bill of sale to say, Hey, I sold that there
to Cole Simons last year, it is still your car. We need
legislation that is going to fine these people because it
is pollution.
Just this morning I stopped down at Parsons
Road, where we took away about four abandoned
cars that had been there for a year, and now there is
an abandoned taxi. Then we wonder why there are no taxis on the road. One of them is down at Parsons
Road abandoned. I am glad that the authorities from
Transport are here now. There is a blue Toyota taxi
down on Parsons Road. Pleas e go and mark it and
fine him. These are things we have to talk about.
In order to get around this Island, we need to
have properly paved roads. So I thank the workers in
the Ministry of Works and Engineering who are doing
their best to pave the roads. I also thank the workers
at Works and Engineering and the Parks Department
who are keeping the roads trimmed. Because if your
roads are not trimmed, somebody has got to go out
wide, and somebody might be going out wide the ot her way, and you know what is go ing to happen. Two
cars in the middle of the road, two vehicles in the mi ddle in the road —we are going to get carnage.
Mr. Speaker, let me go back to something.
Again, this Government has a responsibility to create
employment, to create opportunities for employment.
Every one of these vehicles, whether it be a bus, a ferry, a taxi, minibus, or rental car, they all require a
mechanic to fix it. If those mechanics do not fix those
cars, within a year they will not be able to be driven.
That is a fact. If yo u look in the Digest of Statistics,
half of the mechanics in this country are not from this
country. If you go to any high school and you ask,
How many of you want to be mechanics? Very few
are going to put up their hands. Yet, five years later
they will b e complaining that they do not have a job.
We have to be real with our people.

We have to be real. We
need our Bermudians to be motor mechanics. A motor
mechanic can make upwards of $100,000, i f not more.
If you are a marine mechanic, you are rich!
So I am thanking those who put this together,
but let’s not forget there are things that supplement our transportation situation here. Let me reiterate, Mr.
Speaker. We are one of the few Caribbean is lands
that have public transportation. We will continue to be one of those islands. Other islands are looking at us
for examples, and we have to use that and instil pride
in our people in our public transportation system.
There are going to be those who, O h, the buses smell
like this . . . Oh, the buses are dirty. But they still catch
the bus, right? Ask them, Do you want to pay $5.00
for the bus or do you want to pay $30 for a taxi? They
will catch the bus, right?
So I say this, Mr. Speaker: I am not going to
be like the Opposition and say we need a White P aper, because I have faith in my Government that Green Paper, White Paper . . . no paper ––that re commendations are going to be taken and action is
going to be taken that these things will be done. In
closing, Mr. Speaker, I know that there is some level
of discontent by our bus operators, but I want to thank them for their service. They have a right to stand up for what they need, not necessarily what they want,
but what they need.
And there is another thi ng that needs to be
considered, Mr. Speaker. We have parents that say, I
am willing to pay money for my child to go to school
on the bus. It might be a dollar. It might be fifty cents.
But they are willing to pay. So, in closing, Mr. Speaker, thank you to the Department of Transportation,
thank you to those who wrote this , thank you to those
who provi de public transportation —the bus drivers,
the ferry drivers, [and] the mechanics who service
them. Thank you to the taxis and thank you to Jacob
Miller. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other . . . oh, Deputy Speaker. You
have the floor.
Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, a letter was written to the editor
some years ago and it was signed by a taxi driver.
That taxi driver said that if 70 per cent of the taxi dri vers, taxis, were on the road 10 hours a day, we would not have a problem.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: I tend to believe that
that statement is stil l correct. It may be out a few
points, but I think it is correct.
Mr. Speaker, at one time we had 600 taxis,
now we got 44 less. I am not sure why that is. But, Mr.
Speaker, I think we have some good investors driving taxi. And then I think for some reasons a lot of them
do not drive at night -time, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I
think we need to have strict legislation in place to pr otect our taxi drivers, particularly from the unsocial b ehaviours that some have encountered over the years.
I think it is what has led many of them to not drive cer-tain hours in the night or during the day —not the day,
but particularly in the night -time. And some do not
1802 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly drive in certain areas because of this here. So I think
that we have to protect them with very strict, mandat ory sentences. That if you harm or attempt to harm a
taxi driver in his duties as a person trying to make a
living, and particularly if they have a family —

Mm-hmm.
Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: —then you need to
face the stiff arm of the law, t he very strict arm of the
law.
Mr. Speaker, also, many years ago when you
had [William] “Cheese” Ray and Malcolm Terceira
own taxis, they owned a lot of taxis, and those taxis
were on the road at least 16 hours a day. But they
controlled them in a way that we do not do today.
They had locks on the gas tank tops. So you had to
go to their gas station to fill up.

[Laughter and i naudible interjections]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That
is what they did.
So, those taxis, they operated at a time when
we had 10,000 hotel beds. We had many tourists here
and so that is how . . . and we did not have the pro blem that we have today. Now we have 5,000 hotel
beds, still the same number of taxis (minus the 44)
and we have got problems. In additio n to that, we
have the minicabs.
So I think what we have to do, we have to pr otect our drivers with legislation so when they are out
there, they know that if anyone is trying to rob them, or whatever, that they are well protected under the law
with mandat ory sentences and mandatory fines. So I
think that is something that taxi drivers should never
ever face, or anyone, when they are out there trying to
make a living and feed their families, Mr. Speaker.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I think that in one of the
reports it says that they want to increase the taxi rates
by allowing Rate 3 to start at 10:00 [pm] instead of
midnight. I do not know if that is the way we should go when we compare our taxi rates to other parts of the world. You know, right now we pay $2.75 per mile.
Even places like the Bahamas, they charge $1.60 a mile. That is one of our competitors in the tourism i ndustry. But ours, when I look at the report they have
here, ours is the most expensive. And so I think we
have to be very careful on that, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I sympathise with the Minister
for Tourism when he says they give 20 extra permits. I
understand that. Mr. Speaker, I think it was about two Saturdays ago we had a cruise ship in, and this was
after 1:00. I got a (what do you call it?) WhatsApp pi cture. Tourists were waiting for transportation. There
were no buses. No minibus. No taxis. On a Saturday. Mind you, many of the taxi drivers are Christian. Some
go to church on Saturdays and some go Sundays. But
we should not suffer because, as in the past, as I said earlier, the Terceira and the Cheese Ray taxis, they
were on the road seven days a week. But we have to find a way to make it comfortable for taxi owners to let
someone drive their car, because, at present, if they
drive and they m ess up, they are on that particular
taxi’s insurance. Maybe we need to think about having
an insurance for drivers, other than the owner, so that
whoever the driver is, and if they have an accident,
that that driver’s insurance would be responsible.
So we can sit here and say, Taxis should be
on the road 16 hours, 12 hours. But I think if a lot of us
faced the situations that they have, we might think and
say things different, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, when it comes to dress code, I
do not think that the dress code is strictly adhered to.
We need to have people who are driving taxis adhere
to the dress code. And I am not sure if we have a dress code for minibus drivers, and if we don’t, we
need to put one in, because we cannot expect taxi
drivers to have a dress code and minibus [drivers] do
not. The bus operators, they have a dress code. The
uniforms are provided as per the Collective B argaining
Agreement, Mr. Speaker. So we definitely have got to
do some things to help our taxi drivers to do better
and al so feel comfortable that if they rent their taxi out
to a driver, that they are covered, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the . . . and
again, right now I know the law does not say this, it
says the taxi should be on the road 16 hours. I really
think that is even long even if you have another driver
because that is a lot of wear and tear on that taxi. But
I do not think taxis have to be on the road 16 hours. I think, like the taxi driver wrote some years ago, that if
70 per cent of them operated for 10 hours a day, we
would be okay, Mr. Speaker. Now, even though we have 5,000 hotel beds
as opposed to 10,000 years ago, we have more tour-ists in the cruise ship tours. So we have to accomm odate them. And we have done that because we have
got these minibuses, we have got quite a few minibuses on the road. There are 147 minibuses on the
road as compared to 1999 when there were seven.
And let me say that the minibuses that we had on the
road in [1999] , they were from ASB. That little, probably, eight -seater; they were small ones. And they had
maybe one or two bigger buses. They carried maybe about 30 passengers. So, with all the minibuses that
we have on the road, taxis, the 556 taxis, we should
be able to provide adequate transportation to those
who ne ed it. So I will be with the Minister with ever ything he does to try to improve that.
Now, Mr. Speaker, let’s go on to the bus operators. I can tell you, we have got some good bus
operators in this country. When you look at our safety
records, our safety records are probably amongst the
best in the world. I say that because if you look . . .
well, we know the size of our roads. They are very narrow. So you got to be on the ball when you are
driving those buses. You know, you are manoeuvring


Bermu da House of Assembly the whole time . . . unlike if you are on a big highway,
you can relax a little bit. But in Bermuda, at least
90 per cent of the time of your route on the road from
Somerset to Hamilton, or vice versa, you got to be on the ball. You have got to be all hands on deck be-cause of the size of the roads. And [consider] the
number of other vehicles that we have on the road,
Mr. Speaker.
You know, we got . . . what? 48,000 vehicles
on the road. That is a lot, almost 49,000. And, Mr.
Speaker, we have not had any new roads in over 30 years. I think the last addition to our roads was Palmetto Road, parts of Palmetto Road. And that was
probably over 30 years ago. And we do not have any
land for any more roads. So, we are not going to get any more roads. So we have to . . . you know, we got
to be careful.
Now, a lot of our roads that are constructed
today are taking a beating. They are falling in because
of the heavy vehicles. When those roads were co nstructed years ago, they were not designed to carry
the heavy vehicles that we have today. That was
proven just out by . . . is it Marsh Folly? Just before
you get to where the pond used to be. Well, the road
caved in a couple of years ago, maybe five, six, seven
years ago. And when it was dug out to repair it, there
was no rod in there. No rod whatsoever. So you got a
lot of these roads that we have today that weren’t
constructed . . . I guess in those days they did not
think that we would have the heavy vehicles that we
have today. I just hope the Bailey Bridge and the rest
of them will hold up until we are able to fix [them].
And then again, when they even used the asphalt on the roads, you know, that . . . when you have
that heavy equipment, the thickness [of] the asphalt,
all that has to be taken into consideration. So it is a lot
of expense, when you have these heavy vehicles, to
the taxpayer. So, it is a challenge here, Mr. Speaker.
Now, just like the taxi driver, I think our bus
operators need the protection . . . because there have
been some incidents where you have folks come on the bus with weapons. And, just like taxi drivers, we
have female drivers also. It just makes it worse. And some of these folks are rude. So I think the legislation
that I would certainly discuss with my colleagues that
needs to be put in is, again, mandatory strict impri sonment when you mess with somebody when they are
trying to earn a living for their family.
And, Mr. Speaker, our bus system is very,
very expensive. It is, in my opinion, too expensive, too
costly, for us. We are trying to run a Rolls -Royce
schedule on a Toyota budget, Mr. Speaker. I think
presently if we want to run by the schedule that we
have in place, we need about, I guess, between 85
and 90 buses. Well, I think that is too much for Bermuda. I think we need to have a schedule, one f or
what I call off -season, when we do not have the cruise
ships, and I think that [we need] anywhere from 60 to 65 buses [on that] schedule. And then when [the tourists] are here, probably 70 to 78 buses on the road.
But I am not suggesting that we need t o take
and get another schedule. What I think needs to happen is you cut and paste. Because right now you have buses leaving town during rush hour, with not even 10
passengers on board. We should be able to fix that.
And then I am seeing, I think within an hour and a
half, five buses leaving St. George’s going to St. D avid’s [with] not many people on those buses. To me,
that does not make much sense. So, I think we need to do some cutting and pasting and get the system
right. We do not need to go and pay a whole lot of
money for another new schedule, just cut and . . . they
would know what to pull out and what to keep in, Mr. Speaker.
And then there is a lot of discussion about bus
fares, we gave bus . . . yes, our Government, and
proudly we did, gave free bus routes to students, and
all my friends who are over 65. Well, I certainly think we should leave what we did for our friends over 65.
And I think there should be some modifications [for]
students. I think students should be free up until 4:30.
And if after 4:30 they pay half price, half price of an
adult schedule, of adult fare, because a lot of students
come into town, and they are on the bus. That bus is
taking our folks back home. And they cannot get a seat. They are free.
Now, Ms. Smith has laboured all day. And she
cannot get a seat. They are not like when you came
up, Mr. Speaker, many years ago, that if a lady got on
the bus, we got up. And I would encourage even t oday, as our parents, to teach our children, when a lady
or an elderly person gets on the bus, you get up and
give them a seat. In my country, the UK —

[Laughter]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: I think it is the first five
seats.

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Yes, my place in the
back there.
But the first f ive seats on both sides of the bus
are reserved for seniors, pregnant women and the
physically challenged. And it is not a problem. You get
on the bus, everybody, they leave it. And if they have
to get up, then they give a seat. That is what we used
to be like years ago when you were coming on, Mr.
Speaker. You are much older than me; you know that.

[Laughter]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: So, we have to get
back to that. Because even though I am happy to say
I had that word with the former Minister and the pr esent Minister about marking our seats, the first three
1804 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly to five seats on each side of the bus for seniors, pregnant women and the physically challenged. And it is
done. He showed me the picture this morning. They
were not on every bus, because someti mes I ride the
bus, and they are not on every bus. And I am hoping
that it is on every bus now.

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Yes. I have seen it.
So, it should be put on every bus. But we have got to
get back to that culture where we respect our elders.
But our children only do what we tell them to
do or what they see us doing. I remember one time I
was in Barbados, Honourable Member Kim Swan and I. We were at a CPA meeting [Commonwealth Parli amentary Association], and we went downtown, and we
caught the bus back to the hotel. We went to the terminal, caught the bus. The bus was full. And, you
know, good Christian boys like we were, are, when
ladies got on, we got up and gave them a seat. People were looking at us like we were crazy. I said, Well,
Kim, I guess I’ll have to be crazy, because I’m going
to give this lady a seat. That is what we do. That is
how I was brought up.
Even today at my young age, I get up if I am
on the bus and a lady gets on, I give her a seat. That
is what you are supposed to do.

That is right.
Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: That is what you are
supposed to do; regardless of if that lady is 30 years
old or 65 years old. That is what we did. We got up. In
school, we got up for the girls w ho caught the school
bus! That is what we did during high school. Young
boys got up for the girls, the young ladies. And, you
know, I am proud to have done that. That is how I was
taught. And I think we have got to start teaching our
children.
But back to the fares, Mr. Speaker. I think we
have got to look at the fare system for students. I think students, all students, should be free Monday to Fr iday. After 4:30, Saturdays, Sundays and public hol idays and summer holidays, they should be paying half price of an adult fare. Because, you know, Mr. Speaker, the cost, the cost to run these buses is very, very
expensive. It has gotten better from the 1999 pricing.
But it is nowhere near what it should be today, b ecause back in 1999 the cost was 40 per cent. And that
is the revenue and cost ratio. But today, 2017/18, it is
26 per cent. But that is still high, Mr. Speaker, because we are footing the bill of about $30 million. Yes.
In fact, the revenue for buses was $6.4 million. The
expenditure was $21.7 million —mu ch too high, 29,
almost 30 per cent! And the ferries were 78 per cent.
But, Mr. Speaker, I read about what it cost to
run the ferries. We have got to look at cheaper ferries,
and that is what we are doing, because in order to alleviate the congestion on our roads, we only have
one choice— the water. So, we have to look at that
and make sure that we have the facilities and where
the ferries can park and pick up if you want to stop the
congestion.
But, Mr. Speaker, let me go back to our token.
Right now, I t hink we have got it wrong. Mr. Speaker,
we have got it wrong, because if an adult orders a token for [the] 14- zone, it would cost you $5, cash, or
$4.50 in a token. But that is not so bad. But if you pur-chase a booklet of tickets, of 15, your fare one way is
like $2.50. It is cheap. It is a giveaway.

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Yes, it is a giveaway,
very cheap. We cannot afford to . . . and I am not tr ying to put expense on everybody, because we are
putting expense on the taxpayer right now, right? But
we have to fix that, that part of it. We have got to
make that . . . because if a token––it is cheaper to get
a token than to pay cash. And that is fine. We have
got to bring the . . . If you buy a booklet of 15, we have
got to m ake it a little, just a little higher than it is. B ecause we are giving it away, and we cannot even cover our expenses on that.
And then in one comment and thoughts in this
here, they said about introducing two fares, one for
the tourist and one for Berm udians. I could never be in
agreement with that, Mr. Speaker. I do not like it. I
know that in some parts of the world, I am told that it
is a price for tourists and it is a price for the locals. And I have never heard of that in Bermuda, and I
hope it nev er happens. It is one price for all in Berm uda. If it is two prices in Bermuda, then it is news to me. But I think we just need one price, one price for
all. Because why would we charge a tourist more than a local? What are you expecting, for a tourist to pay
for everything? We have got to pay for something, too. So, I do not agree with that, Mr. Speaker.
(One second, Mr. Speaker.) And then, I think
with what they have done with the tourist . . . no, not
tourist, but the sightseeing buses, they gave that t o
the minibuses. That is $1 million in revenue that we do not take in anymore, Mr. Speaker. So, I think we have to . . . I do not know if they can go back and do that.
But we have got to look at that.
And then, there is a concern. I know it is a
concern, and it is this report , about lights on cars, LED
lights. Some, particularly seniors, have a problem with those lights at night -time. I see in the report you can
buy what they call night glasses that will cut down that
glare. I know it would be very difficult to —I do not
know. I am saying it would be, but I really do not know. Let me take that back. If we can get the proper
lights or what we call the proper lights on our cars,
with these small roads, narrow roads, we can never be compared to those big countr ies, and that is what


Bermu da House of Assembly they use out there. So far, they are not very good for
us here in Bermuda.
And then, I see in the report about some of
the cyclists riding the Hellman with the headphone on
and talking on the phone —not very good. Not very
good at all . You cannot be at your best —you are ri ding that bike with all the traffic that we have and tal king on the phone —and still maintain safety. That is not
the way it should go.
Mr. Speaker, one thing I am glad about, and it
happened under the previous Government, the intr oduction of minicars for our tourists. I like that. I get a
little nervous sometimes when I see tourists, partic ularly older tourists, riding bikes. But with the cars, to
me they seem safer for them. And with that, you know, I certainly appla ud that. I like that, and to me I
would not let many tourists over a certain age right the bike. I would put a rule to that. And they can do the
car. But I would not want them to have the bike. You
know, they should have the minicar. They look very
comfort able in there. So, I think that is the way we
should go with that, Mr. Speaker.
Before I sit, Mr. Speaker, let me check one
other thing before I sit. I think I have got everything
that I intended to say today, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. Thank you very much.

But I certainly feel compelled to
support the Minister in this Green Paper. I think it is a
well-done document, and I certainly give kudos to
whoever else assisted, the technical officers and ev eryone else.
Mr. Speaker, let me start off. I have a few
points. I will say that most of the points I would like to
have covered have been covered. And I will only mention them for the sake of my c onstituents who mentioned them to me. So, those ones I will mention. But
let me start with a quote. And it might have to start
with a bit of thought for some of us. “You can’t understand a city without using its public transportation.”
That is where I will start, Mr. Speaker. It will sink in
eventually.
Mr. Speaker, transport is really one of the
many drivers of the Bermuda economy, and that is no pun intended. It is one of the drivers of our economy
because it gets people from A to B. And if they do not
get from A to B and back again, then, you know, they
are not able to work. They are not able to come into town and that sort of thing. And that is whether it is public or private transportation. And I certainly feel
that there should be a smooth connection between the
two. And I think the Green Paper is speaking to it, with
neither side having a disadvantage. They should be
able to co- exist. And I think that is what I get from
reading as much as I have done of this Green Paper.
And I certainly applaud, as I said, those persons for
doing this.
Now, Mr. Speaker, it has been far too long a
love/hate relationship between the stakeholders when it comes to transportation, whether it be the users, the
operators, owners, we as Government. You know, we have all taken a stake, and that is both governments.
So, it has not just been this Government presently.
And there have been several attempts to try and sort
out our transportation woes, if I can call them that. In
fact, I can remember sometime, I think it was 2005 when the then Minister of —no, 2012 that time when
the then Minister of Transport had asked me to head a
committee to look into some of the taxi woes at that
time. So, you know, everyone has had an attempt at
doing that.
Which leads me to say that there is really
nothing new under the sun. You know, it has all ha ppened before. And throughout every consultation pr ocess, and even this one included, there seem to have been three areas of main concern. And they seem to have been, again, highlighted in this Green P aper.
The three main ones are safety . Everyone wants to
know that, you know, they are safe on the roads. They
want reliability, because, as I said, people want to get
from A to B, and they need to know that they want to
get there on time and back safely, as well. And of
course, there is always the desire for frictionless
transport experiences , which again the report speaks
to.
I certainly would like to know that we have a
reliable bus service. I know right now we are having some challenges with the schedul es. We seem to
have come to the end of the mechanical problems, or
at least arriving to the end of those problems. And I
would hope that we can sort out that scheduling pro blem very soon.
The taxi service, we seem to have always had
this issue. One of the things is that taxi owners consider themselves independent businessmen, of
course. And they feel that they should run their bus iness the way they [want to]. But they need regulation,
and they need, obviously, to adhere to the regulations
that . . . and for that, I think we need traffic enforc ement. It needs to be stepped up.
Certainly, in terms of bad driving, I mean, Mr.
Speaker, some of the driving on our roads today is
just frightening. I can certainly say that on a daily ba1806 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly sis, I have the pleasure of t aking my grandson to
school every morning. And he and I, that is our bon ding time. And when I drop him off, I leave up west, and
I take him down to Devonshire. But the woes start
when I come back. Because I am going down with the main flow of traffic, as m ost of the traffic is going from
west into town. But when I am coming back, I am
coming back almost on a road that is clear.
But the danger is that third lane. Mr. Speaker,
it is really becoming frightening coming back, because
there are a few turns in the road. And I come around a
bend, and I see a cyclist in the middle of my lane. And
I am saying, You know, come on now. And obviously,
he is expecting me, I guess, to go over. But somebody
. . . you know, he is coming at a speed where he has
put himself in danger. I say he or [she]. And som etimes it is not just the young. It ranges. The ages range all over.
We also certainly need to modernise our
transportation system. It has been mentioned that we have something like 48,000 vehicles on the road. And we nee d to adhere to some of the road rules. And it is
not like when I certainly learned how to drive, or I was taught when I went to the [Bermuda] Tech under an
English learning/driving something. And it told me
about all the rules of the road and that sort of thing,
which is fairly similar to something else I am going to talk about, Project Ride, as I get in further on the
points.
In my study in looking through this report, I
just happened to say, I wonder how many dispatch
systems are in Bermuda? And I looked in the phone
book, and I saw at least five different dispatch compa-nies. I am saying like if we have, or we think we have
like 550, short of 600 anyway, taxis on the road, or
supposed to be on the road, having five dispatch
companies to me seems to be lik e an overkill maybe.
And something centralised needs to be done. In an
island 21 square miles, I am sure that we can do
something.
I certainly like the idea of trying to get the taxi
drivers to accept credit cards, because I certainly have had persons, whether they be tourists or even locals, using the taxis and have no cash. But they
have cards. And someone mentioned a really serious
situation where the person did not have any cash at all. And the taxi driver seems to have gotten a bit upset about it. But I believe that it is now the time that
our taxi drivers look at having the credit card system
in there.
Mr. Speaker, if I could refer to page 59 of the
report, which talks about wheelchair access vehicles. I like the term “ differently abled persons .” I do believe
that we have not serviced that population well enough.
My colleague, MP Furbert, went into great detail tel ling us about the needs of that population. I really think
that this is something that we need to look at. They
need to get about just as m uch [consideration] as we
able- bodied persons, if I could use that term. Now, I am going to go onto one of my pet
peeves, on page 119, which talks about Project Ride.
Now, I mentioned that when I —it has been some time
ago. When I learned how to drive even, as I said, I was put in a training which is similar to what the police training, driving instructions, give. And as I said, we
had that ability up at Bermuda Tech. The problem
with, I think, our school students taking Project Ride —
it is good because they are all passing and that sort of
thing. But, Mr. Speaker, you watch them on the road.
Coming down between eight and nine in the morning, when I am coming back up South Shore Road, and I
see the ties, so I know which schools we are talking
about. They are like a crazy bunch. You know, I hate
to use that term, but I do not think they are applying
the Project Ride principles on the road.
And I appeal to parents to instil in their chi ldren that if they are on the road, they have a respon-sibility. Those machines that they ride, they may not
be that quick. But if they hit a 3,000- pound vehicle
coming at them, you know who is going to win that
one, simply.
Another one of my issues, Mr. Speaker, is
those dark visors that the riders use. Now, there is
always good and bad for everything. I mean, for those
who need the glare cut, the dark visors are, obviously,
the thing for them. But I believe some of these riders
who wear those dark visors believe they must have some protection built in that stops them from getting
hurt on their bikes, because they are some of the cr azier ones. And you can tell by the way they are coming at you that they are looking right at you. You can tell. You probably cannot see their eyes, but you can
tell by the shape of the head that they are looking at
you as if, You had better move. And I cannot —I just
cannot understand how this is really happening. So, I
do not know the solution to the wearing of dark visors.
But I certainly feel that this is another one of our problems on the road that n eeds to be curbed.
As I said, our driving habits have just like
gone out the window. I mean, you take, for instance
. . . first of all, no one drives at 20 miles an hour now. I
know it. I do not. Because the cars in front of me are
moving, at least, and I am talking kilometres now, 40–
45. The car behind me is right up on my bumper. So,
you know, somehow or the other you have to measure
your distance between the cars. And the normal
speed right now, obviously, seems to be somewhere
between 45 [kph] to 50 [k ph]!

[Inaudible interjection]

So, you know, and my honourable colleague says, It’s because the police don’t
stop. So, therefore, they are getting leeway. Next it is
going to be 60. Pretty soon, it is going to be 60 [kph].
That is going to be the norm of driving on the road,
which is going to make it even more congested with
48,000 vehicles on the road. So, I certainly think that


Bermu da House of Assembly penalties need to be looked at. If TCD are going to do
a review of the driving rules, I certainly think that they
need to look at the penalties, as well.
My next point that I want to talk about co ncerns the Railway Trail. On page 126, there was a
question asked about the use of the Railway Trail.
And it did not seem as if it was such a high percentage of people who actually use it. And I am a little
surprised, because I am a proponent of using the
Railway Trail for exercise, in terms of walking, pedal
biking from . . . because I think Warwick has one of
the best structured railway areas in our area. And I
use it a lot because I come off the hill from my house,
and I either go west or east. I see my colleagues
laughing. Yes, I do go out on my bike occasionally, pedal bike, that is.

[Inaudible interjection]

Yes. All right. I will tak e your
point.
And I certainly take the point where the Mini ster in his brief said that the Government “will continue
to assist with the work of the Friends of the Railway
Trail by taking on the maintenance and repair of each
new connection and . . . the l andscaping of the Trail
as a whole.” I certainly commend them in that, because I certainly again am making an appeal for a
portion of the Railway Trail in my area, which is Warwick, that probably needs some attention at this time.
Mr. Speaker, I think I have maybe two more
points that I wanted to bring up. I do believe that this document is work in progress. So, a lot of the things that my colleague, Honourable Famous, mentioned
that are not in the report, I am sure are things that
they can now have another look at, or have a look at.
So, I certainly feel that there is much to do about this.
And it is a work in progress.
Mr. Speaker, there is a point that talked about
public ferries, on page 31. And I am not being pedantic about it, so I want to actually r ead it, if you do not
mind, page 31, the Public Ferry, yes. That is also,
“How frequently do you use the [public] Ferry?” There were like 20 per cent of people who said that they
never use the public ferry. Well, again, I would like to encourage some of my people to go out. It is probably
one of the best stress relievers that I know of right
now in terms of just getting on the water. I will drive
my car into Hamilton, find a spot, of course, a parking
spot, and take the ferry and just go to Dockyard. Take
my grandson with me and just have a good time. And
you are seeing some of the best areas, points of i nterest, in Bermuda. And it is a very relaxing opportun ity. So, I would certainly encourage persons to use it.
But there was also another point that came to
my attention, where the report talks about putting
handrails near public ferries. Well, that I definitely applaud. But I am going to say that I have been asking
for a handrail near one of the bus stops in my area. And I would hope that maybe that could be looked at,
as well. And that fact is on page 36. So, I will actually go right to it, as I have the number here. It is “1.2.3.4.
The Ministry of Transport is supportive of installing
handrails at ferry stops and erecting more signage where possible and necessary.”
Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that there are some
of the bus stops near that need handrails, as well, b ecause I certainly had a concern from one of my constituents, who gets off the bus on South Shore Road.
They are going down to Warwick Lane. And t here are
steps there. But she is like 80- something, and she
would feel a lot more comfortable if there was a rail. I
am making an appeal, Mr. Speaker. I have probably
gone through the proper channels, yes. But I am also
making the appeal here.
Mr. Speaker , it has come to my attention that
Project Action, which offers some free transportation for seniors, which is used for Bermudians traveling to
and from their dialysis appointments, is something
that, you know, we want to support, as well. And I u nderstand they are celebrating 20 years of being in that
sort of business.
Mr. Speaker, I think those are the points that I
really wanted to bring to our attention. As I said, those
are the ones that were put to me by my constituents.
And I felt that I was oblige d to bring them. But let me
end with another quote that I found as I was doing my research. And it says , “Bicycles are the most efficient
vehicles on the planet, 50 times more efficient than
cars and twice as efficient as walking.”
Thank you very much, Mr . Speaker.

Thank you, Member.
I now recognise the Honourable Member from
constituency 36.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.

Hon. Michael J. Scott: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, it has been 72 years since the
introduction of automated transportation in our fair Island. It mirrors with the same period of years that is
now being celebrated and was particularly celebrated
yesterday, June the 6
th, with the commemoration of
the Normandy landings. Interestingly, though, the connection between the Second World War and
transportation on our Island does have some links. It
was after the world war that the introduction of aut omated cars was introduced into our little Island after
the abandonment of the 1931 to 1941 experiment with
railway travel in our Island.
And I just looked at the googled history on the
history of the Railway Trail. And it was described as
the costliest transportation experiment ever in our hi story, possibly in other transportation histories, of
around $40 million, bas ed on 2008 prices, $40 million
to build a 21- mile single -gauge line between Somerset
and St. George’s to carry freight and passengers.
1808 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly But today, 72 years later, we are examining
what has grown into a rather large change from the
few cars that began to be regulated by the 1947 Road
Traffic and Motor Car Acts of the day, the few cars that were being introduced into the Island in that era. And an examination, just a short examination of the
legislative references in the report by the Honourable
Transport and Tourism Minister documents that the
Road Traffic legislation and the Motor Car legislation
all begin in 1947.
And you can just imagine that, at that time,
with the number of cars that first became registered in our country, things went along rather genteelly. There
were not many cars. There were not many policemen
chasing speeding drivers. There were not many traffic offenders appearing in the courts for driving in excess
of the speed limit, or driving whilst under the influence
of alcohol, or driving wit hout a licence or insurance.
But typically, as our history progressed, as in all matters, we start seeing the need to better regulate the
uptick and usage of cars and motorbikes and auxiliary cycles and motorcycles. And the legislation reflects
just these kinds of developments.
Mr. Speaker, the taxi industry has a history of
the very noble taxi. It has been used to educate fam ilies, support families, educate children, build homes. It
has a noble history, Mr. Speaker, of being a business, a business that was incorporated by many, many of
our men and women of the 1940s, the 1950s. And as
the industry, the tourism industry became more pr onounced, the taxi integrated into that industry. And
then there was the ordinary Bermuda hack who used
his or her taxi to tr ansport and respond to the local
demands for moving and transporting our residents.
And its noble history of building families —
Radnor Road was built on the back of the taxi, the
noble taxi, and many other parts of our country. And
kids returning home from school would drive mom’s or
dad’s taxi to fund the remainder of their school year. The taxi, as I say, has . . . and it is the reason, I believe, that it becomes such a passionate, emotive di scussion when it comes to making changes to it, as we seek and as we inevitably must do. It becomes a chal-lenge to do it because of this deep and abiding history
that the taxi has had.
Contrastingly, too, the motor car industry has
an equally noble history. The taxi industry, on the one
hand, had a huge placement in t he black community
as a black business asset. Certainly, the motor car
industry, Bermuda Motors, largely the Gibbons family,
after 1947 have seen that this history has grown into
an industry which has been extremely beneficial and profitable as an industry , a burgeoning industry, to
supply private vehicles and trucks and motorbikes to a
modern Bermuda.
So, both histories of the taxi and the motor car
have been important in our country. And they both have had a role in organising wealth and wealth being
built around these two industries. There was a time when the taxi was capable,
as I was indicating, of supporting the family. But the question to ask today is whether the millennial, new
taxi operator can do it. The answer, I think, is an emphatic no. And th e answer, this answer I give really
finds many of its, much of its evidence in some of the
things we have been discussing, Mr. Speaker, about
the cost of living in our country. So, once upon a time,
the taxi was able to cause men and heads of families
to start their homes, start a family, support a family,
pay for the education for their children.
Today I do note that, because the cost of ev erything, the cost of living has gone up, it is becoming a
greater challenge. And whilst I have noted that Mini ster D e Silva has itemised in the analysis of his report
the cost of the permits and the cost of operations we
have heard discussed here today, today the challenge of financing the $100,000 permit at the bank is a little
more challenging than it was in the openi ng gambit,
the opening bat of this taxi industry. And so, I would commend for the consideration of the House, as we
examine this Green Paper, and certainly for the Mini ster and his team, that this be a factor that we list and
take into account how we may assist with this whole
question of how banks, for example, rate lending for
borrowing for the taxi permit.
Now, you know, really, the banks do the usual
risk assessment for this $100,000. And they make sure that the debt -to-income ratios are all working. B ut
I have encountered the banks’ concern about bringing
into the mix whether the taxi will earn throughout the
shoulder season what is meant to be an un- risked
income from that vehicle during the shoulder seasons,
versus its being perfectly agreeable to the lenders, the
bankers, during the high season. But it is a challenge
which I invite the Minister to put into the mix in consideration, how some members and operators of taxis face these challenges and whether there can be some
consideration given as to as sist the taxi operators
managing the whole question of funding a taxi permit
in a modern Bermuda.
Well, I am glad to see that the Minister is
ready to make a wind- up of this important debate on
transportation. And, Mr. Speaker, with that I take my
seat.

Thank you, Honourable Member, for
your contribution.
And, Minister, I believe you are the last
speaker at this point. Would you like to do your wrapup at this point?

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Yes, I would, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank
all Members for participating. Transportation in the
country is going to be very, very important, going for-ward. As you will know, we have increased our cruise
ship visitors over the past several years, wit h yet a nBermu da House of Assembly other increase expected for this year. We continuously
work hard with regard to the airlines and the air lift to
the country. And we have a team that is working on
that, I would say almost daily, Mr. Speaker. It is a
challenge with regard to airlines coming to Bermuda.
It is not the profitable route unless your airline is
named BA, or Delta coming out of Atlanta. But it is a
challenge.

You do not want to do anything to help
with the cost.
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: And as we continue t o try
to increase our visitors to the Island, whether it be
through cruise or air, the transportation issue will con-tinue to be just that, a challenge. I think the steps
spoke to it very well where we were in 1999 in terms
of the tourists we had and in ter ms of the available
transportation that we had. So, I think that spoke volumes as to where we are.
But there have been some good suggestions
today by all Members. And I appreciate their contrib utions and feedback. There are a few other people I
would like to thank, Mr. Speaker, none other than the
Deputy Premier, Mr. Walter Roban, because this pr oject started under his watch. And I am happy to say that it gives me great pleasure in being the one to bring the final version here to this House.
But there are also some other people, Mr.
Speaker, that I think, whilst I am in the thank -you
mode, I would like to thank all of my colleagues who
sit on this side of the House for their contributions
over the past six months.
And in the House today, we have Ms. Stace y
Evans, from the Ministry of Tourism and Transport,
who did, I must say, most of the heavy lifting. She did
a lot of the research, a lot of the writing, a lot of the
interviews, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, I would
like to thank Ms. Evans for her hard work and her
stick- to-it-ness, because it was not an easy task.
I think the Permanent Secretary told me,
when I was talking to her one day, I think she said that this is the 14
th version, something like that. So, that is
how many versions they actual ly went through. And I
would certainly like to thank my Permanent Secretary, Ms. Aideen Ratteray Pryse, for all of the work that she has done.
Mr. Gilbert Rowling, from the Policy Unit, collated all of the survey results. And there were many, as you know, almost 20,000. Honey Adams, of
course, from the Department of Communications, who assisted with those surveys. Julie Marshall, Depar tment of Planning, she assisted. Creativ e Service, for
the final product, which was not an easy task, either,
Mr. Speaker. And last, but not least, Theresa Ince, my
secretary, for doing a lot of the reviewing and proof-reading and formatting. And it certainly was no easy
task, Mr. Speaker. So, I do thank them all for what they accomplished; and [they] accomplished a major
feat indeed.
Now, Mr. Speaker, and for those who asked
for and requested, I will declare my interest. As you
know, I do have a container hauling company. I have
a trucking company. I have a tire business. I am just
trying to think if I need to cover anything else whilst I
am making a declaration.

You are in conflict.
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: —you are in conflict?

[Laughter]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: But a couple of things, you
know, I would like to touch on, Mr. Speaker. And there
were several questions. And I will try to cover as many
as I can. But there was a question from MP Scott
Pearman with regard to dark visors and what we plan
on doing with that. And I think he had some questions
about the importers. But we will talk to the importers.
You know, it is not like we are going to ban
them overnight. We know that people are in business.
We will deal with that. It is no different than if we de-cided in this House that we are going to eliminate all
fossil fuel vehicles by 2030 or 2025. If we decided we
are going to make this Island entirely electric, we are
not going to do it overnight. So, we will have consult ation. We will think about it. We will talk to the people in
the industry. And if I have to lay down a marker, that is one that I will lay down. That is som ething that we are
going to consider in the future, in the near future, se tting a timeline where we are going to set an example,
hopefully, for the world. So, that was that, Mr. Speaker.
The Honourable Member Trevor Moniz had a
few questions. He wanted to know the cost of high
speed versus fast ferry. High speed ferries are $11
1810 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly million; fast ferries are $7 million. And, of course, they
burn less fuel. So, we will be looking at that very ser iously in the near future, as we are now.
There is a question: What are we doing about
the time frame for student bus service, and how many
buses will be needed? It has been estimated that we
need approximately 20 buses to accomplish that feat.
Of course, the challenge we have right now is with
buses in general. But, hop efully, in the near future, we
will have an announcement on that, too.
I think the Honourable Member Trevor Moniz
also asked about organising minibuses. Well, we are
in the process right now of drafting instructions for
minibus regulations, and we anticipate that this will be
laid in this House before the year is over, Mr. Speak-er.
And there was some talk about the bus
schedule. And again, Mr. Speaker, I do not think it is
any secret —the bus schedules have been a cha llenge. You know, there is no way that you are going to
get 20 people in a four -seater taxi, are you? You are
not going to have that happen. It is not going to hap-pen. So, that is the challenge we face. You cannot get
a square peg in a round hole unless you trim the edges. So, I think that is w ell documented. It is certainly
my intention to resolve the issue with regard to the
bus challenge that we have. I have said it before, and I will say it again tonight: If I have my way, it will be
sorted and sorted as quickly as we can. But I am
working on that, and I hope to have some news soon.
The grey schedule, there were, I think, a couple of questions on the grey schedule. And the grey schedule is used . . . maybe it was about the overtime,
I think, maybe, someone wanted to know what we are
spending on that. But the grey schedule is part of the
overall service. The overtime is paid as needed. So,
as we work it, the overtime is paid.

Thank you.
Minister.
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Thank you. Thank you,
Opposition Deputy Leader.
Why do we need it? Because sometimes, we
just have to juggle the schedule. And overtime is r equired. And the 1998, the old schedule, is insufficient
to meet the 2019 requirements. So, without the grey
schedule, it is going to be a challenge. They call it the
grey schedule, and I think it is more for explanation
purposes. It is like the night train or the night run that
we were talking about. A nd of course, I was happy to
announce that finally, after I don’t know, umpteen
years, we finally got night train times resolved. And we
agreed on a time. So, that is just one of those things.
Someone asked, how much is a new bus? It
is between $360[,000] and $370[,000].

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Yes. It is actually on page
23 of the Green Paper. But I think Mr. Moniz, the
Honourable Member, asked that question. I think it is
on page 23, and [the approximate cost is] $369,000.
And the other question MP Moniz asked was,
Are the buses with GPS, are we not getting any wider
info? Well, GPS is just to tell you where the buses are.
They are not going to tell you how many people are
riding. Not yet. But technology is coming, and you w ill
hear me talk a lot about technology and the buses and
transportation and ferries and all the transportation in
the country, going forward, because that is the way
the world is going. That is the way the world is going.
How many hours do minibuses have to be on
the road? There are no prescribed hours at this pr esent time, at this present time. Now, Mr. Speaker,
there were several Members opposite who asked the
same question, or made a statement, Why are we not
having a White Paper? They are disappointed we are
not having a White Paper. And almost everyone, to a
person, when they said they were disappointed we
are not having a White Paper, also said, We need to
get on with things right away. They are almost . . . you
know, it is . . .
So, the challenge i s, Mr. Speaker, I could tell
you. I made that decision. And the reason I made that
decision is I know how long it took to put together a Green Paper, right? And I know how much work went
into it for my people. And like hell if I was going to sit
here and s pend months and months and months with
us producing a White Paper. No way, Mr. Speaker! It
is not happening. Look. We have the Green Paper.
We have had a full debate today. And I can assure you I will keep Members updated as to what we are
doing with trans port in the country as we do it. Okay?
We want to get moving. We want to get things
done. We want to get people transportation when they want it. Our visitors —I spent three hours up at Doc kyard on Wednesday, three hours. And I am going to
spend more and m ore time up there. I spent three and
a half hours meeting with all the taxi drivers last week.


Bermu da House of Assembly Yes, all of us in a room together. And I will tell you,
what a meeting it was, Mr. Speaker! But that is the
type of thing I am going to do. In order to understan d
it, we have to do it. We have to live it. And if I have to get on buses and ride from Somerset to St. George’s, I am going to do it.
I spent a couple of hours in St. George’s yesterday looking at that depot down there. I do not blame the operators. How many of us want to go sit in
a porta- potty at this time of year?

Or any time?

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Or any, but in particular
this time of year? And sit down in a porta- potty for 20
minutes in this blazing sun.

[Inaudible interjectio ns]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: After sitting on a bus for
three or four hours?

[Crosstalk ]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Now, Mr. Speaker, you
know what else I found down in the East End yesterday? That is why it is good for Ministers to get around.

An Ho n. Member: Yes.

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: I went down in this building
that was —

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Yes. But I did not catch a
bus.

[Laughter]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: But I went down, Mr.
Speaker. The building had been condemned. It had a
letter on the door, dated July 2014! Now, I am just saying 2014, July, was three years before we got
elected. I am just saying. That building has had a letter on it. I have a picture right here on my phone, if you let me bring it up to show Members. July 2014,
the building was condemned, almost three years to
the day when we took office. So, I ask the Opposition,
why was that situation not fixed then? You had three
years. I am not going to say five; I am going to say
three.

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Oh, so because we have
been there two years? Well, I tell you what, Mr. MP
Cole Simons, who made that comment. I have been in
this seat six months, and it is going to be fixed in the next week. In fact, it is f ixed today. In fact, if you have
not heard, the work to rule is finished. The work to rule
is finished. It is over.

All right! All right!

[Crosstalk]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: The work to rule is over.
But, Mr. Speaker, let me say this, right? I am
going to end on this note, Mr. Speaker. And I heard
Members opposite asking for that White Paper, almost
to a person. And every one of them said that they
wanted some work done. Let us get on with it! Now,
Mr. Speaker, I am going to give them one out of two,
and it is not going to be a White Paper. We are going
to get on, and we are going to get the work done. Trust me; the work is going to get done.
And before the PLP came into power, Mr.
Speaker, buses did not have air conditioners, you
know . And you remember the old saying when the
Opposition, when we brought in those first fast ferries.
I think somebody opposite coined the phrase, It is a
figment of your imagination if you think Bermudians
are going to use ferries in this country. But the l ast I
heard— well, you probably have not been around long
enough. But I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, you were
around. And I remember that phrase very clearly. It is
a figment of your imagination. The Transport Minister,
Ewart Brown at the time, our Premier, t hat is what he
was told.

Ferry fantasy .
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Ferry fantasy is correct.
So, Mr. Speaker, we have made inroads with
regard to transportation in the country. And I think
that, if you look back over time, I think the improv ements that we have made in both buses and transportation, and our taxis and our minibuses, because
these taxis have improved. They have gotten larger.
We have gone from horses to wagons, you know, taxis and minibuses. And people are asking for permits
for bigger minibuses. So, we have made inroads, Mr.
Speaker.
But I would just like to finish on this note, I
thank all Members for their contributions, and I look
forward to us completing a lot of the things that are in
the paper. We will get them done. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.

Thank you, Minister.
That brings us to a close of the items that are
on the Order Paper for today.
Deputy Premier.
[Inaudible interjection]

1812 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly The Speaker: Oh, yes, yes. You have to resolve that.
I forgot, for your m otion, for that particular motion, yes.

[Pause]

The Clerk: Okay. It has been asked i n the resolve
that this Honour able House supports the rec ommendations and prior ities set out in the Green P aper on
Transportation 2019.
All those in favour?
All those against?

AYES .

Thank you, Deputy.
Does anyone wish to speak to that?
We recognise the Minister of E ducation.
Minister.

T. N. TATEM MIDDLE SCHOOL

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Thank you, Mr. Speaker,
and good afternoon to the listening public.
Mr. Speaker, last week I announced in this
House something that I did not take very lightly. It was the closing of one of our middle schools for the u pcoming school term.
But, Mr. Speaker, I want to start by asking
your indulgence as I quote, first from my Statement
and then from the Hansard.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: And I am quoting from my
Statement, Mr. Speaker, wherein I said, “ In regard to
the future of T. N. Tatem, this decision to close is, at
the moment, applicable to the upcoming school year
only. As we move forward with our plans to reform
education and phase out middle schools, the outcome
of those discussions will frame the decision- making
process on the future of T. N. Tatem. ” Mr. Speaker, I would like to now quote from
the Hansard from last week, Friday.

Continue.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: And I quote . . . And th is
was in response to a question from Member Susan
Jackson. And I said, “Mr. Speaker, I will reiterate and
try and say it much more clearly. We will not invest
any money in the school until we know what we are doing with the building. And until we get to t hat point,
then we will have the conversations of what will be done, what will be invested in the building, what r emediation, what rebuilding, what renovations. We will have that total conversation once we have reached
that point of what we are going to do with the building
as it relates to the entire school system.”
Now, Mr. Speaker, I bring that up because no
more than 30 minutes after I made that speech in this
House, the Opposition Leader spoke to ZBM. And
unfortunately, I was unable to speak to ZBM because I was dealing with the situation at the BUT [Bermuda
Union of Teachers], which took me until 9:30 that
evening to deal with. But, Mr. Speaker, you can imagine my surprise when I listened to the ZBM news that
night, and I heard the Opposition Leader s ay, and I
quote, “Wouldn’t it be best to plan forward the things that this school is deemed necessary to close it down, rather than put $3 million into a school for remediation
work, fixing it up, when after the fact we end up closing it down? Is that, wil l that money be well spent? I
do not think we got an ans wer to that.”
Mr. Speaker, I thought the answer was quite
clear. But, Mr. Speaker, it is clear that some Members
opposite just do not listen when we read these Stat ements. It is clear, Mr. Speaker, t hat—

That is a better way of putting it.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Mr. Speaker, it is clear from
this erroneous statement that Mr. Cannonier made . . .
I went up to the station on Monday and cleared it up.
And they produced it, and they put it on the news, and
they put it out there and said, The Minister disputes
that. And I passed him the Statement, and they saw
that.
And if they had listened to an y of my previous
statements to the press, anyone would have known
that there is no intention to carry out any repairs to
T. N. Tatem until we know exactly what we are doing
with our realignment of the school system. And that
was quite clear.
But, Mr. Speaker, I understand. When people
leave here, they get in front of the camera, and they
kind of just kind of try and remember what they are


Bermu da House of Assembly doing, and they just say things. And they say things,
grandstanding, politicking, whatever. But, Mr. Speaker, I would n ever normally even touch this, because I
am used to their selective hearing. I am used to their politicking. And I know that it does nothing to further what we need to do to get our education system moving on.

Well, just speak to the Chair.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: But, Mr. Speaker, why I
rise to my feet today is because I was shocked to see
that the Shadow Minister of Education, after that being
cleared up on Monday, put out an opinion piece, ent itled “State of Uncertainty in Education.” No w, Mr.
Speaker, notwithstanding the absolute disconnect this
article had with the actual issues of the day and what
is going on in education, and I am sure his handlers
had read the various comments on his article in
Bernews and on social media, and taking into account
what the people are saying about what he actually did
say, there is no need for me to go into that part of it.
But, Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the part of
his op- ed that got to me. Mr. Speaker, I quote from the
Shadow Minister’s op- ed. And he said, “
1The other
crucial issue which the people of Bermuda must pay
careful attention to is the future of T.N. Tatem Middle
School.
“The Minister confirmed the school will not be
reopened for the 2019/20 school year. He also confirmed that $3m will be invested to refurbish in the
school.” I do not understand how he got that. But I
continue. And he says, “What is the Government’s
plan for the school and how does this fit into the bi gger scheme of the reorganization of Bermuda’s schools with the eliminat ion of Middle Schools and
introduction of signature schools?
“How will the restructure impact the intake of
students at other schools in 2019/20?” He went on further to say, “What will happen to the current teac hers and staff members in the school? They must be
involved in this process.
“As I indicated once before, there needs to be
more synergy and better communications with all
stakeholders so that there is a higher level of trust.”
Mr. Speaker, the Shadow Minister has a habit
of finishing these ghost -written op- eds by saying, We
need to take politics out of education. And I agree with
him. I absolutely agree with him. But, Mr. Speaker, it
is now time for the Shadow Minister to follow his own
advice. As if he was asleep when I read my Stat ement, Mr. Speak er, I will refer to it again, where I
said—

Well, we heard it just now. We heard it.


1 Bernews , 4 June 2019 Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: —where I said, “ This dec ision is critical and was not made lightly, as a safe and
healthy learning and teaching environment is par amount for our students and staff at T. N. Tatem Middle
School. We are invested in ensuring that this remains at the forefront of all decisions made in regard to our
schools . . . To date I have met with the T. N. Tatem
PTSA Executive , the T. N. Tatem School Principal ,
the T. N. Tatem Health and Safety Chairperson, T. N.
Tatem staff, and the p arents of current T. N. Tatem
students . . . .”
Does that sound like no one has been contacted, Mr. Speaker? Does that sound like no one has
been contacted, Mr. Shado w Minister?
I also went on to say, “ I have also corr esponded with the parents of current P6 students who
have applied to attend T. N. Tatem . . . It was critical
to meet with school staff and the parents of T. N.
Tatem students , to listen and obtain feedback as we
discuss next steps . . . My goal is to maintain a transparent and collaborative approach with all stakehol ders in the best interest of our children and staff. ”
So, the question befalls us, Why write such an
article, which is in direct contrast t o everything that
was said in this Honourable House?
Mr. Speaker, most of the comments under this
article alluded to the fact . . . and I wondered why the
Shadow Minister was doing a statement like this. What was he doing while I was reading the Stat ement ? You know, this is the danger of just signing
your name to ghost -written articles done by political
consultants, Mr. Speaker. Because you will get called out every single time that happens.
Mr. Speaker, we are in a very sensitive place
when it comes to education. There is a fear of what the future holds, because when the data are looked at
objectively, the only path for us is to have a long, ser ious look at how we are going to restructure our sy stem to ensure optimum outcomes for our students.
This means change, Mr. Speaker. And this
means change to some who are very used to the st atus quo. This breeds fear, and that is understandable.
And I understand that, Mr. Speaker. But, Mr. Speaker,
change will come. Change will come to our system,
and change will c ome after proper consultation.
Fearmongering, using [nonfactual], incorrect and nonsensical trash attacks, like what happened in the
newspaper this week, has no purpose but to score political points. To the same article that said, We need
to remove politic s from education, Mr. Speaker.
As a former Minister of Education, MP Simons
should be much more aware of how the Department
of Education works and how it administers education
to the system in Bermuda. The Shadow Minister
needs to stop using politics to score points and follow
his own advice: Remove politics from education.
Members opposite need to finally grasp that they have
been weighed, they have been measured and they
1814 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly have been found wanting by the electorate, and they
showed them that in July 2017.

Oh, wow.
[Inaudible interjections]
Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: The comments on Bernews
and the comments on Facebook —
[Gavel]
Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: —to the Shadow Minister’s
article are telling. And I challenge him to go and read
those articles, because the people see through the
drivel, and they see that what is coming from that side
has no place in what we are trying to do, Mr. Speaker.
To help Members opposite, I offer this, Mr.
Speaker. I will reach across the aisle and invite any
single one of them to come and vi sit me in my office. I
will show them what goes on in Education. I will have them sit down, and I will have them see how it works
and how they failed with their five Education Ministers
in five years.
So, Mr. Speaker, hopefully, if they come and
they find out, they can relay this to their ghost writers
so we can have accurate articles depicting what is
happening in education. They can actually begin to start helping us get to where we need to be in educ ation instead of impeding progress, Mr. Speaker. B ecause that is all they are doing is impeding progress.
Mr. Speaker, we need all hands on deck in
order for education to be where it needs to be. Educ ation is too important for either party to fail Bermuda, Mr. Speaker, for either party to fail Bermuda. I am wil ling to work with anyone on that side who wants to
work, Mr. Speaker. But if they will come with anything
less than wanting to better education for Bermudians, they can continue to sit over on that side, snipe as
they wish, and get the type of reaction that this article
got in the newspaper when it was just branded as rubbish by pretty much everyone who read it, because
they know.
And I have lost count of the number of teac hers who commented on that article and told that Shadow Minister, Please, sit dow n. So, Mr. Speaker, if
you cannot, if [Members] opposite cannot manage to
see that what we need to do is work together to move
forward with education, if all they want to provide is
less than that, I implore them to be quiet and get out
of the way of our progress. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As the Pres ident of the BUT
has said, The Minister is long on words and short on
actions. And that is why we have the challenges that
we have today, Mr. Speaker. He talked about, Mr.
Speaker, consultation with the parents, consultation with the students. My article w as about the teachers.
And the teachers feel that they have not been heard,
they have not been listened to. Yes, you can have
meeting with the teachers. But are you listening?

[Crosstalk]

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Point of order! Point of clarification, Mr. Speaker!

Wait, wait, wait! One second, one second, one second. One at a time.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]
Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker.
Point of order, Mr. Speaker. He is misleading the
House.


Bermu da House of Assembly Mr. Speaker, this is the first Minister out of all
of the OBA Ministers, who has met with the teachers
on three separate occasions —the first Minister. And if
he can point -of-order me and tell that he met with the
entire body, I invite him to do so.

[Inaudible interjections]

Just speak to the Chair. Speak to the
Chair. Mr. N. H. Cole Simons: Mr. Speaker, again, same
story —talk, talk, talk. And the principals are where
they are on work to rule because, again, as I said before, I stand by my article. They have not been heard.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Point of order, Mr. Speaker! Point of order, Mr. Speaker!

Mr. Speaker, a number of
teachers and principals have said to me, Listen. I want
to do a world- class job in the delivery of the services
that we provide to our young people. I have values,
ideas and contributions that will increase the value of
what I can do to the system. And they feel that they
are not heard.
Mr. Speaker, I said to one . . . one principal
came to me—

[Inaudible interjections]

Members, Members!
[Gavel] Mr. N. H. Cole Simons: Mr. Speaker, one principal
came to me and said, All the Minis ter needs to do is
meet with their principals on a quarterly basis or semi -
annual basis. And they, the Ministry and the Minister,
will get a lot of their answers to the challenges that they face today. Because the principals are the lync hpins between the Ministry and the teachers, the
teachers and the parents. They have experience.
Most of the principals have 30 or 40 years of exper ience in education, leadership and development of policies within their schools. And they have indicated to me on many occasions that they are undervalued,
under -appreciated and under -respected. And that is
why they are having the problems they are having
today.
Mr. Speaker, I understand the Minister’s sensitivities. Mr. Speaker, I also understand that the job that he has is very difficult. But at the end of the day,
we have to be truly honest and bring—

Bring the principals along.
And listen to them! And not just promote and rush
through your agenda.
The issue of the middle schools and the si gnature schools . . people have said, This is a major
shift in education in this country. And to have anec dotal reasons as to why it is shifting and getting rid of
middle schools was not good enough. You heard it
from the President of Bermuda College. You heard it
from foreign educational professionals. Mr. Speaker,
you have reputable people saying, Okay. Well , you’re
going to make this decision. Make the decision based
on analytical data. Because this is shifting education
in Bermuda.
But yet, to date, we do not have it. The Mini ster said he has been consulting with the community on
the shift to signature schools. But at the end of the
day, he has not told us why the middle schools are not
working. He has not told us why —

[Inaudible interjections]

[Gavel]

—the principals are not doing
a great job in leading the middle schools. He has not


Bermu da House of Assembly said what deficiencies in performance the middle
schools currently have, Mr. Speaker. No! He has just said, We’re getting rid of middle schools, and we’re
going to signature schools because . . . I presume he
means that the middl e schools are not working effectively. But if that is the case, what resources has he
given to ensure and remedy the situation in the middle
schools which he feels that they are deficient? None,
Mr. Speaker. None!
And so, these are the issues that bother professionals within the industry, that bother the teac hers. They are saying that they are making all of these
changes. They do not understand why they are ma king them.
Now, I have to agree. I totally support the new
strategic plan because it is a plan that was driven and developed by the community, by the stakeholders.
And it is incumbent upon all of us, including myself, to
ensure that this plan is delivered and that the teac hers, who also form a significant part of the plan, that
there are strategies to help them to be the best that
they can be. That section of the report needs to be
given priority to ensure that our teachers feel good
about themselves, they feel that they can make a valued contribution, that they can better perform their
functions in he lping our children to be the best that
they can be.
To me, that should be a priority. And if it were
a priority, we would not have what we have today. Let
me tell you, Mr. Speaker. I was horrified when the
Bermuda Union of Teachers said to us, to the publ ic,
that they took a vote of no confidence and that they
indicated that the Commissioner and the PS were not up to scratch in regard to the vote of no confidence. I
have also been told what they wanted to do the Mini ster. But they were influenced not to do the Minister.
And so, they went with the —

They went and did a vote
and said, Okay. We cannot get the Minister now. So,
we will go wi th the Commissioner of Education and
the PS.
So, again, somebody may have exerted pressure on them, Mr. Speaker. But at the end of the day,
there was unrest because of the leadership, direction and decisions that were made in a bellicose fashion in
the management of education in this country, Mr.
Speaker.
Now, the Minister can be sensitive to the i ssues all he wants. His job now is to stop making a whole pile of noise, and deliver the Education Plan 2021 and ensure that he does so in a respectful manner and show leadership that is required in education.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, for the last
few months, particularly in sittings, I have listened to the Opposition, and I have listened to people out in
the community walk up and say, you know, What are
you doing? When are you going to get any inward i nvestment in this country ? I have heard it. I have heard
them alluding to it.

[Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr., Deputy Speaker, in the
Chair]

The news this week, Mr.
Deputy Speaker, that Bermuda will host a $3 million
PGA Tour event is more than proof cer tain that this
Government is fishing where the fish are. I would venture to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is an oppor-tunity for this country to reach out and connect globally where the money is. In my trade that I am blessed
by God to have come into, I have travelled the four
corners of this earth. I have met some of the wealthiest people in the world. I want to today pay homage to
a man, Mr. Jack Moseley, the President of USF&G. He died in 2003. But in 1983, he met this country boy
down in Castle Harbour because he went to Auburn, I
went to Troy, and he invited me to play in the USF&G
New Orleans Open as his guest.
And he said to me, he says, You can play
whenever you want in the New Orleans Open. I used to open my tournament up to Charlie Sifford befor e
you. I say that because USF&G went out of business
in 1998 and was bought by Travelers Insurance. I look on the PGA Tour, and I see companies like Chubb,
who have a presence in Bermuda, who used to be
ACE. I see companies throughout the PGA Tour like HSBC, who have a presence in Bermuda.
1818 7 June 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly But if you looked at the top 50 reinsurance
companies in the world, they are not just in America.
They are all around the globe. I would venture to say
that the opportunity that golf presents to this country is
one, is a model that helped build Bermuda’s tourism
from the get -go, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You understand
it probably better than I because you grew up and you
are a Tucker’s Town man. His family . . . Tucker’s
Town is where his family comes from. He knows. He
grew u p caddying just like I did. I could not go down to
Tucker’s Town and caddy. I tried once. I said, I will
stay Belmont where I’m going to get a rip. They
looked at me and said, Boy, you ain’t going to rip here
unless we’re desperate.
Well, I am saying that , Mr. Deputy Speaker, to
say that the origins of Bermuda, when Castle Harbour and Mid Ocean were built by Charles Blair McDonald
and Seth Raynor and banks, the understudies, the
owners and principals of Castle Harbour, who sponsored me on the European tour , owned Pan Am!
There was no reason why . . . it was no secret why
Pan Am used to have that flight that left at eight
o’clock in the morning, because they had people living
here who wanted to stay here on the weekend and be
back at work. And they could do so conveniently, from
Bermuda. That is the type of money that does not only
exist in America. It exists all around the world, in Afr ica, in Asia, in South America, in North America to a
lesser degree than it once did. And we need to tap
into it. They play golf!
Now, I am saying this. This PLP Government,
led by the Honourable David Burt, and this particular Tourism Minister, the Honourable Zane De Silva, have brought a tournament here for five years that taps into
golf in a real way. Bermuda was a pioneer in televised
golf. I am talking about things that I have written about
and spoken about for many years. The Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf at Tucker’s Town back in the
1950s, late 1950s, when Mason Rudolph played Sam
Snead. That is right. Sam Snead on the front line had
three pars, three bogies, and three birdies for an even
par, front nine, at Mid Ocean Club.
When Tony Lema came to Bermuda with
Bermuda relatives nonetheless, you talk about the
Portuguese connection. No, people do not know that!
He won th e British Open, Tony Lema. The type of
people whom I looked at when Archie Compston was
the pro at Mid Ocean. But who were the people whom
we golf pros, lowly golf pros, country -boy golf pros
some of us, interacted with? The wealthiest in the world. Archie used to teach King Edward, educated
the Crown. Many stories about that. I know, but I am
sworn to secrecy until the person who told me dies.
She told me, You’d better not tell those stories until
I’m gone.

[Laughter]

Oh, yes! Yes. Money —
you have to fish where the money is.
And why am I making this speech today? My
cousin, the late Reginald Burrows, made a similar cry in the early 2000s. Money in Bermuda? Get on board! Get on board with this event. Because it is an opportunity for you, for us, for your goal!

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: I’ve heard this before.