THE TRAIN COMING BACK

Jul 16, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – People are talking about plans to bring back de railway. The idea it is said will allow for the movement of large numbers of persons to and from the large housing schemes on the West Coast of Demerara and the East Bank of Demerara.

The reintroduction of the railway is seen as solving the congestion on the country’s main public roads, especially during peak hours. By having a railway, larger number of persons can be moved more quickly from housing schemes directly into the city.

It is anticipated that with more and more persons settling along a narrower strip of area, with more and more families owning cars and the resulting problems of traffic congestion, persons will eventually force the establishment of a railway.

But where will this railway be built? Where will the lines be and how will it criss-cross the existing roadways.
Railways are meant to move large numbers of persons and goods. It therefore has benefits for the country.
But it is also costly to establish and to run. Unless there is guaranteed heavy flow of persons and goods, a rail system cannot be viable.
Guyana once had a railway network. The PNC closed it. At the time the option was to go for roads, since this formed part of the manifesto of one of the coalition partners of the government.
The leader of the United Force had promised “highways to happiness” and after the ousting of Jagan, the West was willing to throw a great deal of money behind Burnham so as to curtail the communist threat that they perceived came from the PPP. As such they gave a great deal of money to build the United Force’s “highways to happiness’. These highways linked various parts of the country.
At the time that money was given to construct these highways, the cost of fuel was low and thus the government of the day, anxious to show that progress was being made, and eager to create jobs, opted to close the railway line and build a network of public roads.
Most of these new highways were built ten to fifteen years before their time. They were greatly underutilised in the early days and even when a toll was charged this could not meet the expenses of maintaining or paying back for the roadways.
The government of the day was not bothered by this fact because the highways, to them, represented visible signs of progress, never mind that soon after they were constructed, the oil crisis hit and forced the government to regret their decision to close down the railways.
The PNC government regretted the closure of the railway line. But it may have been doing itself and the country a favour because the railway would have run bankrupt under the PNC.
At the time of its closing, there were problems with not enough persons using the trains. The railway company was not in good shape and even if Burnham did not close it down, it would have closed by the fact that it was running bankrupt.
It was also becoming difficult to keep free riders off the trains. Many persons were known to hitch a free ride on the train, and the conductors could not have controlled this, very much like what happened later with the public bus transportation when persons got on the bus and when it was time to show their tickets had none to present.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the bus company experienced problems but its eventual demise was due to the bankruptcy of the government and its inability to maintain its fleet or to find money for spares.
When the PPP returned to power in 1992, President Cheddi Jagan requested the Indian government to examine the feasibility of restoring the railway lines.
That study, done when oil prices were below US$20 per barrel, determined that it would not be feasible to reintroduce the railway. Gasoline was cheap and therefore not much savings would be had for the average citizen for switching to a rail system rather than travelling by public road transport.
The present rise in oil prices may be a factor that could now make a railway line viable. With oil prices tipping at over US$100 per barrel and with the number of vehicles increasing daily, it may make sense to reintroduce a railway system.
However, there are other factors which would suggest that such a plan would not be feasible. For one, Guyanese are now accustomed to fast travel and a train having to stop at almost every village will not attract many customers, not when there are some minibuses which get you to your destination much faster. As such any railway would have to be one that had no or few stops.
The other problem is who will run the rail. A railway cannot be administered by the government.
If a state railway line is introduced in Guyana, it will go broke within weeks because there will be so many free-riders that the revenues would never be able to compensate for cost of running the system.
What Guyana needs is a hybrid system: better roads and express passenger trains moving from the large housing schemes to the city with no stops along the way. But the road network needs to be improved also since the growth in vehicular traffic is creating havoc
A railway is needed to allow for travel to the hinterland. Imagine what a spectacular view it will be to travel by train across the Rupununi Savannahs.
This will certainly help tourism. It also will allow for the easier movement of goods over such long distances. It makes sense instead of building a road to Lethem if a rail system could be introduced.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

 

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