All aboard
A Beaconite spotted a school bus the other day, prompting him to wonder why the Virgin Islands doesn’t have a better system of grown-up buses for grown-up people. It is quite incredible that in such an affluent society few residents can actually go and catch official public transportation. There is nothing for tourists arriving at the airport, nothing for shoppers seeking bargains, nothing for sightseers — and, more importantly, nothing to help the environment. If you don’t have a car of your own, you don’t have a choice but to stand by the roadside with your hand out begging for a lift from a kindly stranger. Yes, there’s the rather toy-townesque shuttle service in Road Town, but nobody knows when it’s going to turn up, and it only covers a very small area. The schedule for a periodic bus to West End is similarly opaque. Bermuda is almost exactly the same size as Tortola, and it provides an excellent bus service that boosts the local economy and the independence of its citizens. Obviously, Bermuda has more than double the population of Tortola, but why let that limit ambitions? Surely, with half the population the territory could at least aspire to half the impressive service of the fellow territory? The kids are okay, but what about everyone else?
What’s the plan?
In the Virgin Islands, tourism keeps moving — ships keep docking, villas keep filling, cocktails keep clinking — but the plan to guide the sector never seems to arrive. Another delay, another shrug, another line about “sometime in 2026.” Given that the industry is the territory’s main employer, this indifference is alarming. But a Beaconite wonders: Maybe the absence of a plan is the plan. Because when there’s no plan, there are no measurable goals to miss. No benchmarks to underperform. No blueprint for anyone to question. It’s a kind of freedom, really — freedom from structure, from strategy, from the risk of having to admit whether something’s working or not. Meanwhile, other countries are drowning in the opposite problem. Spain, for example, has a national tourism strategy, sustainability plans and data dashboards. Yet its cities are staging water-pistol protests against tourists. Too much of a good thing has turned the “model of success” into a cautionary tale: overcrowded streets, rising rents, locals priced out. They planned, they grew — and they grew too much. Then there’s Indonesia. Bali’s so popular the government had to call a moratorium on new hotels and villas. Imagine that: a tropical destination saying, “Enough.” That country’s national plan talks about balance, sustainability and “ten new Balis” — code for spreading the pressure around. So here in the VI, maybe the delay is more than bureaucratic inertia. The Beaconite suspects it’s a quiet hedge against taking full responsibility for the tourism economy — like the slow dance of independence with the United Kingdom, and perhaps a similar dance with the cruise lines too. Without a plan, leaders can claim flexibility. They can court visitors while pretending not to notice that the roads, housing and waste systems already groan under peak-season strain. Maybe the plan is to stay unplanned: paradise by plausible deniability. But there’s a thin line between being strategic and simply drifting. A tourism plan, after all, isn’t about telling tourists and stakeholders what to do. It’s about guiding the territory on what to become — and what not to become. So will the VI write the plan, or let guests write it instead?
Sidewalk work
A Beaconite was glad to see recent repairs to sidewalks in Road Town and Huntums Ghut. One piece of pavement along Waterfront Drive, for instance, was completely replaced. This was a welcome sight to the reporter, who, like other pedestrians, previously had to walk completely around the damaged pavement block due to a massive hole. She hopes such repairs continue. Despite the recent work, there is still much to be done to make the capital pedestrian-friendly. Many sidewalks are still crumbling, and other areas lack sidewalks entirely. Meanwhile, precious few walkways are easily accessible to people in wheelchairs or pushing strollers.
