Road or Rail?

Aug 14, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

(Kaieteur News) – It is commendable that the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) has taken the time to respond to the concerns being raised about the proposed Versailles-to-Parika four-lane highway and, in particular, the allegation that the project is grossly overpriced when compared with the Eccles-to-Great Diamond road. Too often, governments spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars and then behave as though asking questions about the money is an act of treason.

The CH&PA in its response exposes a serious weakness in the comparison being made by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed. The $13.3 billion for Eccles-to-Great Diamond is the actual contract price of a completed project, while the roughly $108 billion, or $121 billion depending on which figure one is using, for Versailles-to-Parika is an estimate for a project that has not yet been awarded.

The CH&PA’s larger point is that Mohamed is comparing the headline prices of two projects without examining what each project actually contains. In other words, he is not comparing apples with apples, or even oranges with oranges; he is comparing oranges with mangoes and then wondering why they don’t taste the same.

The first difference is size, and this is not insignificant. The Eccles-to-Great Diamond highway is approximately 8.6 kilometres, while the Versailles-to-Parika highway is about 20.74 kilometres, making the latter roughly 2.4 times longer.

But length does not tell the whole story, says CH&PA. The preparation base for the Region 4 road was about 25.99 metres wide, while the Region 3 road requires a formation approximately 53.15 metres wide, meaning that the area requiring preparation and sand filling is estimated to be about 4.9 times greater.

That means more sand, more earthmoving, more compaction and more preparation before anybody even starts laying the pavement. So, the simple calculation of dividing the total project cost by the number of kilometres of finished road is clearly inadequate.

Then there are the access roads. Eccles-to-Great Diamond included approximately 0.8 kilometres of road widening and upgrading, while Versailles-to-Parika includes about 68 kilometres of access roads and associated upgrades.

That is an enormous difference which cannot simply disappear because somebody wants to produce a neat cost-per-kilometre figure. Those additional roads require earthworks, pavement, drainage, labour, equipment and materials, all of which cost money.

The bridge component is also substantially different. Region 4 had 40 bridges, amounting to about 1,500 linear feet, while Region 3 has 62 bridges amounting to approximately 4,050 linear feet, including 18 separate 120-foot bridges compared with only two in Region 4.

Region 4 has more culverts by number, but when their actual dimensions are considered, Region 3 has approximately 514 linear metres compared with 486 metres in Region 4, and construction cost depends on dimensions, reinforcement, foundations and ground conditions, not merely on the number of holes under the road.

Then comes revetment, with Versailles-to-Parika including about 3.82 kilometres of work to protect and stabilise embankments and adjoining waterways. That is another component which did not form part of the identified Eccles-to-Great Diamond scope.

Perhaps the most important difference is that the Region 3 project requires more than 31,100 metres of prefabricated vertical drains, reaching depths of approximately 10 to 18 metres, because of weak and highly compressible coastal soils.

CH&PA also points out that Region 4 had reinforced-concrete pavement, reinforced-concrete medians and substantial concrete drainage, all of which can be expensive. In other words, the Authority has not attempted to pretend that every feature favours its own argument; it has acknowledged that some elements of the Region 4 project were more costly.

All of this makes the CH&PA’s response useful because it demonstrates that Mohamed’s methodology is flawed. But—and this is a very large but—the CH&PA has not demonstrated that Versailles-to-Parika is reasonably priced.

It has demonstrated that Mohamed cannot simply take $13.3 billion, compare it with $108 or $121 billion, divide each figure by the length of the main highway and declare the latter project overpriced. What CHPA has not demonstrated is that the quantities, unit prices and total costs contained in the Versailles-to-Parika estimate are reasonable and will represent value for money.

That is the question taxpayers should still be asking. How much will each kilometre of access road cost, how much will each bridge cost, what is the cost of the PVDs, how much is being paid for sand filling, what are the costs of the revetment, drainage and other components, and how do those prices compare with similar projects?

And there is another question which seems to be missing from the debate altogether. Before Guyana spends more than $100 billion on a road, has anybody seriously examined whether a railway might provide better long-term value for moving people, construction materials and agricultural produce between Versailles and Parika?

The proper question is, “What is the most efficient transportation system for this corridor over the next 30, 40 or 50 years?” That requires comparing road against rail.

So let us give CH&PA credit for answering the criticism instead of hiding behind the familiar government response of “trust us, we know what we are doing.” It has shown that Mohamed’s comparison is methodologically weak; but showing that someone is comparing oranges with mangoes is not the same thing as proving that the mangoes are worth $121 billion.

The government still owes the public the second and more important half of the argument: not merely why Mohamed’s comparison is wrong, but why this particular project is worth what it is estimated to cost.

(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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• CHPA, Eccles-to-Great Diamond road, Peeping Tom, Rail, Road

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