Needed - a transportation policy

Peter Espeut

I SEE a report in last Friday's Financial Gleaner in which the government has undertaken to compensate the operators of Highway 2000 for loss of toll revenue if the Jamaica Railway is re-opened. I read into this the death of the Jamaica Railway.

It seems to me that such an undertaking is irrational, and amounts to giving the operators of Highway 2000 a monopoly on mass transportation between Kingston and Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. Can it really be that if the concessionaires can prove loss of toll revenue because people take the train instead of driving on their toll highway, then the concessionaires are entitled to compensation? Or if businessmen send their goods by rail instead of by toll road then the concessionaires are entitled to compensation? What is happening here? What about people who travel by air? Will the government have to compensate the concessionaires if we take Air Jamaica Express?

It is well known that the cheapest means of overland transportation is by rail; and Jamaica was the first country in the British Empire (outside of England) to build a commercial railway (in 1843) only 18 years after Britain herself! Cuba was the first in the Caribbean to build a railway (in 1837) and was the seventh country in the world to do so. We were quick off the mark, but we have squandered any advantage we gained through poor - or no - transportation policy.

Is there any link between our transportation policy and our energy policy? In the context of increasing world oil prices we have allowed the motor car and the truck to so dominate our transportation system that they have crowded out all others; it will be to our detriment in the medium term, and maybe even in the short term.

There is shortly to be another Middle East War, which will drive up the price of oil. Mark my words: the future of mass transportation is not the motor car, and we are again being shortsighted in public policy. To support our car/truck-based transportation policy Jamaica is going to have to construct hundreds of miles of expensive highways, infrastructure that we cannot afford to either build or maintain. The billions for Highway 2000 would be much better spent rebuilding and extending our railway. And further, if the terms for building Highway 2000 include this compensation clause, then the project can truly be said to be reducing our ability to compete economically (by keeping production costs unnecessarily high) and to be holding back our development as a nation.

We should not have to make a choice between a highway and a railway. What Jamaica needs is a proper transport policy, which integrates both passenger and freight considerations, as well as a prognosis of energy costs. The railway system should extend to every pier in Jamaica (Kingston and elsewhere) so that freight can be loaded directly onto boxcars; and sidings should run into industrial areas, right into the backyards of the factories.

There need be no gridlock at the morning and evening rush hours; commuter trains moving between Greater Portmore, Spanish Town and Kingston could move everyone quickly, linking with other public transportation in special hubs. Many people (like in the UK and the US) would therefore not need to drive private cars to and from work. Cars and trucks increase the wear-and-tear on the roads, and pollute the air with exhaust fumes; a railway would take the pressure off the roads, reduce highway maintenance costs, and be more environmentally
friendly.

These ideas are not altogether new. On May 3, 1887 a lecture entitled, "The Advantages to Result from Railway Extension", was delivered at the Institute of Jamaica. In order to better transport his sugar canes to his sugar mill for processing, the lecturer personally planned and superintended the construction of a private railway line connecting the outlying portions of his estates with his sugar mill, and his wharf on the coast. He had personally planned and superintended the construction of the railway line, obtaining all the timber for the sleepers and bridges from his properties, so he was no pipe-dreamer. Just two years before the lecture, the government had extended the Jamaica Railway lines to Porus and Ewarton.

In the lecture he advocated the extension of the Ewarton Branch to Port Antonio, and the Porus Branch to St. James or Hanover. He proposed also that a spur of the Porus Branch be extended to Vere in Clarendon (his plan was that there should be a Central Sugar Factory in the vicinity of Spanish Town to be supplied with canes by rail from Vere, St. Mary and Portland). He also recommended the extension of the railway line in Kingston eastwards "along the foreshore of Kingston, so as to connect the Railway with every Wharf in town".

The lecturer was a member of the Legislative Council, and he continued to strongly advocate the extension of the railway. In 1895 the Porus line was extended to Montego Bay. From Bog Walk on the Ewarton branch, the line was extended to Port Antonio in 1896, making the Bog Walk-to- Ewarton stretch into a spur. Neither the spur to Vere nor the line eastwards to the Port of Kingston were ever built; neither was the Central Sugar Factory. The Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) built a spur linking its mines in the Mocho Mountains to its plant in Vere (linking with the Porus line) in the 1970s, and on to its port at Rocky Point near Salt River, Clarendon. Railway passenger service in Jamaica was discontinued in 1993, but ALCOA still operates the line; it knows the benefits. No doubt the location of the bauxite-alumina plant in Ewarton was facilitated because the railway went there.

Where else in rural Jamaica might have had industrial development if the Jamaica Railway had been nearby? Where would Jamaica be today if we had followed more of this speaker's advice, delivered 115 years ago? We now have a new cabinet, but we see the return of an old face to the Transportation portfolio. I hope he will see to it that Highway 2000 does not foreclose on the great opportunities to be gained from having an extensive functional railway.

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