THE Transport Authority will next month auction over 60 per cent of the vehicles in its 11 pound facilities islandwide to ease a space shortage, managing director Keith Goodison has disclosed.

Auctioning, Goodison said, was one way of dealing with the pile-up of vehicles in detention facilities, some of which “are packed with outdated cars or vehicles which have been in the pound for a very long period of time”.

“We are seeking to have an auction in January where we can try to relieve ourselves of these vehicles. About 60 per cent of the vehicles we have in our pounds are going to be auctioned because they have been there for over six months,” he said, adding that there were over 950 vehicles in pounds at present.

According to Goodison, an informal assessment of the costs to the authority for keeping the vehicles – many of which have been detained for “well over two years in the pound” could place the figure at some $15 million in addition to insurance, security, personnel, and other overhead costs.

In the meantime, he said a previous proposal by the former People’s National Party administration to acquire additional land to be used as pound facilities has been sidelined.

“In respect of additional pound facilities it is a matter we have under review with a new administration because there is a conceptual difference being presented,” Goodison told the Observer.

“The thinking of the new administration is to look at how we can do this thing differently, look at how we can get compliance as opposed to detention. We are looking at what pound facilities we require, how we would strategically place those, and trying to use a more balanced approach to enforcement and seizure,” he explained.

“We are trying to bring as many people into the formal system by allowing continuous registration of applications,” he added.

Vehicles seized by the authority attract an initial storage fee of $2,750 and $500 daily thereafter. A vehicle can only be seized by the authority if it operates without a road licence or contrary to what the licence stipulates.

Meanwhile, Goodison is reporting an increase in the number of applications for road licences.

“We are seeing more applications and more persons regularising themselves, we have issued more licences to route taxi operators this year over the previous year,” he told the Observer.

New applications for hackney carriages, he said, had jumped from 1,727 in 2006 to 1,992 this year. There were also 13,573 applications for route taxi licences this year compared to 11,724 received in 2006.

“From my assessment of our situation, we are making a difference by virtue of how we monitor, regulate and enforce,” he said, adding that illegal operators continue to be on the authority’s radar.