On the heels of re­ports that the Ja­maica Rail­way Cor­po­ra­tion (JRC) is ex­pect­ed to soon re­sume its train ser­vices, for­mer Di­rec­tor of High­ways at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Roger Ganesh is ad­vis­ing that T&T should re­vis­it its rapid rail plan, oth­er­wise this coun­try will con­tin­ue to lag be­hind in its trans­porta­tion sec­tor. He ar­gued this can have an eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage by in­fus­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Ac­cord­ing to Ganesh this would make every as­pect of trans­porta­tion more ef­fi­cient, es­pe­cial­ly in light of ris­ing fu­el prices.

“Every thing could be mon­i­tored, from the amount of fu­el used to re­al time in­for­ma­tion...And just like the bus­es and trains that op­er­ate in the US or the UK, com­muters can eas­i­ly have up-to-date in­for­ma­tion on de­par­tures, de­lays via dig­i­tal broad­cast,” Ganesh ex­plained.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had cit­ed that to date, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have spent some $28.8 bil­lion since the fu­el sub­sidy be­gan.

Ac­cord­ing to Ganesh, dur­ing his tenure at the min­istry a study of a rapid rail was con­duct­ed around 2006 to 2008 which had cost around $100 mil­lion.

To­day, that study sits on the shelf, he added.

He said rec­om­men­da­tions were made to im­ple­ment the rail in phas­es as spe­cif­ic ar­eas were al­ready iden­ti­fied.

“For in­stance at the in­ter­change at Grand Bazaar we left a tun­nel where the light rail was sup­posed to pass through and it would be com­ing in­to Port-of-Spain.

“We were al­so go­ing to build a ma­jor hub op­po­site UWI on the south­ern side and an­oth­er ma­jor hub at the south­ern side of Trinci­ty Mall,” Ganesh said.

He said while there was al­ready a plan, this would now have to be tweaked.

“The way the high­ways have evolved we just don’t have suf­fi­cient re­al es­tate to widen them.

“For in­stance the high­ways go­ing to Port-of-Spain and head­ing east we have ba­si­cal­ly reached the lim­it of the right-of-way by adding the third lane. We need a sys­tem that utilis­es less re­al es­tate but can do even more with more ef­fi­cien­cy,” Ganesh said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he added the rail would have tru­ly brought the coun­try in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry by cre­at­ing a stim­u­lus for eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, with new com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ments and new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties spring­ing up to serve such a tran­sit sys­tem.

Re­gard­ing whether a toll sys­tem was fea­si­ble for Trinidad as a means of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion Ganesh said while this could be done, al­ter­nate routes, how­ev­er, must be up­grad­ed.

The Ja­maica Glean­er re­cent­ly re­port­ed that its JRC would be seek­ing to in­crease the speed of its trains that run from Kingston to Mon­tego Bay once the track was re­stored.

JRC civ­il en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tant An­tho­ny Allen had al­so said that the pas­sen­ger train ser­vice could pro­vide a high­er lev­el of safe­ty when com­pared to the high num­ber of road crash­es and deaths.

Al­so, he said the trains were fu­el ef­fi­cient.

Rapid rail not the best op­tion

Trans­port en­gi­neer and for­mer Head, De­part­ment of Civ­il and En­vi­ron­men­tal En­gi­neer­ing at UWI Dr Trevor Townsend, how­ev­er, said T&T need­ed to ex­am­ine its de­vel­op­men­tal pat­tern, not­ing that the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty would not make rapid rail a fea­si­ble op­tion.

He said while there may be more ve­hi­cles on the road, there may not be more peo­ple.

“The is­sue on how to move the same num­ber of peo­ple hasn’t changed. We may have had more pri­vate ve­hi­cles com­ing in­to the sys­tem but we do not have more peo­ple com­ing in­to the sys­tem.

“Even if the num­ber of peo­ple in­creased by ten per cent it won’t make a dif­fer­ence,” Townsend ex­plained.

He added that as long as T&T con­tin­ued to be an au­to­cen­tric so­ci­ety, there will al­ways be traf­fic jams.

Townsend re­ferred to rec­om­men­da­tions he made at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee in 2019 which he said still re­main rel­e­vant.

“We can­not build enough high­ways fast enough to solve traf­fic con­ges­tion prob­lems. If mo­bil­i­ty of peo­ple is the fo­cus then what is re­quired are poli­cies which en­cour­age high oc­cu­pan­cy ve­hi­cle us­age and the de­vel­op­ment of a mass tran­sit sys­tem,” Townsend said.

He ad­vised that the trans­porta­tion cri­sis can be solved by de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing prop­er poli­cies to en­sure ser­vice lev­els for both ur­ban and rur­al dwellers with­out a de­bil­i­tat­ing drain on the State cof­fers.

“We need to sup­port these poli­cies by strate­gic in­sti­tu­tions with clear man­dates, au­thor­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Townsend said, fur­ther ad­vis­ing that de­ci­sive ac­tion must be da­ta-dri­ven.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had felt that a rapid rail was not out of reach and would have boost­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by cut­ting down the long hours spent in traf­fic.

Dur­ing two of Man­ning’s ad­min­is­tra­tions span­ning 2001 to 2010, se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to in­tro­duc­ing a mass tran­sit sys­tem.

How­ev­er, that plan was still­born.

In April 2009, there were plans to con­struct a rapid rail which would have com­menced in mid-2010

In Sep­tem­ber 2010, the project was scrapped by the new UNC gov­ern­ment.