The Tribune

A Bahamian taxi driver has built a booking app, and hundreds of his colleagues are getting behind it. We should be pleased about that. More than pleased, we should recognise the ambition it represents and ask whether we are doing enough to help people like him succeed.

Lamont Nixon’s Aqua Rides connects passengers with licensed taxi operators, with more than 300 drivers participating through a partnership with the Bahamas Taxi Cab Union. It is a practical response to a familiar problem: drivers need customers, and customers need a convenient way to find a ride.

Mr Nixon knows the business from behind the wheel. He understands what it means to spend hours waiting for a fare while the bills keep coming. He has taken that experience and built something intended to improve the working lives of other drivers. That deserves credit.

So does the union’s willingness to embrace it. An industry with established ways of doing business can easily become defensive when technology offers something different. Here, drivers are participating in the change and giving themselves a chance to benefit from it.

We talk endlessly in this country about Bahamian ownership. We want our people to have a greater stake in the economy, to move beyond collecting a wage and build businesses they can pass on to their children. Yet when someone takes that first difficult step, encouragement can be strangely scarce.

We cannot keep telling Bahamians to become entrepreneurs while making them feel that serious ambition belongs to somebody else.

Aqua Rides is still a business that must prove itself. But it should have the opportunity to do so in a country willing to take its own talent seriously. A locally developed service should not have to become successful somewhere else before we recognise its possibilities at home.

For passengers, the appeal is straightforward. After a long shift, a worker wants to get home. A visitor staying away from the major hotels wants to explore. Someone whose car has broken down wants to arrange transport without calling half a dozen people. If a Bahamian business can make those journeys easier while putting more money into the hands of Bahamian drivers, there is every reason to welcome it.

The introduction of credit-card payments and fare estimates is a useful start. What will earn lasting support, however, is the experience that follows the booking: a driver who arrives, a clean vehicle, a courteous journey and a charge the passenger understands. When something goes wrong, someone must answer the phone and put it right.

Those expectations belong alongside our support for the venture. They are how a promising local business becomes one people trust.

Government, banks and regulators should approach enterprises like this with a clear purpose: help a sound idea become a functioning business. Explain the requirements. Process applications within reasonable periods. Make payment services accessible. Resolve questions instead of passing an applicant from desk to desk.

Safety and accountability must be built into the service, and the same standards should apply fairly to everyone. There is no reason those obligations should become an obstacle course that only people with money, connections or endless patience can navigate.

We should also resist the temptation to discuss every new Bahamian venture as though it must solve an entire national problem before it deserves encouragement. One booking service will not fix public transport. It can still improve journeys, create business and demonstrate what is possible.

Mr Nixon has done something more useful than simply complain about how his industry operates. He has put an idea to work and persuaded others to join him.

That is the kind of initiative we should want taking root throughout The Bahamas. Our people have experience, ideas and ambition. They deserve a country that gives them a fair chance to turn those qualities into ownership and a better living.