Hi,

I am Antonio Gittens, a Transportation Planner based in Toronto with 12 years’ experience in technical consulting. In the past 5 years I have focused on public transit and land use planning, with the goal of bringing my talents home to Barbados to help solve our transportation issues. To that end, I am excited to introduce you to Jarvey—an on-demand shuttle service that provides an affordable, convenient option to augment public transport and helps to curb the demand for single-occupancy vehicle travel. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the Ministry of Innovation and the Ministry of Transport to pilot this solution.

By grouping people together, we offer lower rates than taxis and a more comfortable ride than buses, while tackling some key problems:

• Can’t get where you want to go: Decentralization of government and commercial activity without adequate replanning of the public transport network;
• Traffic is terrible: There are 110,000 private cars in Barbados but the capacity of the road network has not kept pace with the demand; and
• Improvements are difficult: Years of low investment and resistance to reform, alongside challenging economic conditions, make traditional solutions hard to implement.

Jarvey was piloted from October 2017 to March 2018 to gather feedback, test the software, and build out the service. Our software is ready, and our team understands the issues at stake. Having completed 800 trips and built a relationship with a leading local insurer, we are now eager to work with the Government to integrate Jarvey into the local transport sector.

I have attached a short backgrounder of our operations for your review. I look forward to further discussion where I can present a more detailed proposal of how this pilot would work.

Thanks

Submitted by Antonio Gittens