ACCORDING TO an old Chinese proverb - 'One picture is worth more than a thousand words' - which has been adopted as a classic cliché of journalism.
A good example was published in yesterday's edition on Page D3 of Wednesday Business. The photo, by staff photographer Rudolph Brown, showed tracks of the Jamaica Railway Corporation at Industrial Terrace apparently part of the main line leading out of Kingston. But as the caption stated, this was just one more section of the tracks, which was paved over last week Friday, depicting "road traffic getting an edge over rail."
The paving apparently buries prospects of reviving the railway service, which ground to a halt in 1992. Since then there have been sporadic attempts to revive what many think is a more economical mode of transportation than gas-guzzling trailer-trucks plying an inadequate highway system.
The government has remained strangely silent since the most recent negotiations with an Indian/Canadian consortium, Railtech Jamaica Ltd., hit a snag late last year; official sources indicated
yesterday that there were no new developments.
When last year's talks broke off in November Minister
of Transport Robert Pickersgill said that Railtech had cited the potential impact of Highway 2000. That prestige project of the
present administration would offer competition along roughly the same traffic corridor that a revived rail service would run - from Kingston to Montego Bay.
Mr. Pickersgill had also floated an extravagant notion of
retrofitting public transport buses to run on the rails an idea which seems to have vanished from practical contemplation.
With the oil crisis looming as an urgent factor for the cost of
public transportation, the government ought to state clearly whether the prospects of a revived rail service remain an option.
Paving over the rail tracks gives a photographic instant of a wider story. The public deserves to hear the rest of it.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
