Peter Espeut

IT'S NOT because I like trains, but rail is the cheapest and most efficient means of land transporta-tion that exists and has ever existed. Oil is getting scarcer, and dearer, and a sensible country will seek to use as much rail as possible in its transportation plan - even if it has oil reserves.

I note that our CARICOM partner Trinidad announced last month that it intends to reopen its passenger railway system which it closed in 1968. Now we need to look at the rationale of their decision carefully. Trinidad not only has oil, but it has a huge asphalt lake at La Brea in the south. It can build and repair roads much more cheaply than we can, and indeed they constructed the equivalent of our North Coast Highway and Highway 2000 in the 1960s and 1970s - more than 30 years before us; and we have not yet completed even half of ours!

They paved over their train lines to create the Priority Bus Route, making bus travel quick (even when cars are jammed up on the Eastern Main Road and the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway). The Uriah Butler Highway joining Port-of-Spain to Trinidad's second city to the south - San Fernando - (built in the 1970s) has for decades allowed quick unimpeded travel without pedes-trians, stoplights or stop signs.

A cheaper mode

Trinidad's petroleum industry guarantees low, low local gas prices, even when world prices are high; and a reliable supply in times of shor-tages. Why then, are they returning to the railroad? Because to move passengers and freight rail is cheaper and more efficient than Trinidad's cheap motor car gas prices and relatively cheap road maintenance costs.

We closed our passenger railway in 1992 because it was losing money. My wife and I happened to take the train from Kingston to Balaclava a few weeks before it closed, and my recollection is that it the fare was something like $20 including luggage when the country bus fare was $50 - baggage extra. The railway was purposely run into the ground the same way the old JOS was before it was shut down. In both cases, the government decisions showed lack of vision and foresight.

And further, after closing the railway, the government moved to extend the road network around Jamaica with the North Coast Highway and Highway 2000 signalling a major policy shift towards motor transportation - as if Jamaica is a major oil producer and has an asphalt lake it can tap for road construction. You might get away with it if the forecast is for oil to be abundant and cheap for many years to come; but when it is forecast to be dear and scarce, to base your transportation policy on cars and trucks is very irrational behaviour.

And note: I have not mentioned anything about the environment. A transportation system based on fossil fuels will put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse effect and global warming. That, of course, is bad; but having miles of expensive roads we cannot utilise optimally because of a global oil crisis will be laughable, but tragic in a few years. Here is a clear case of a situation where the more environmentally friendly option is also the most sustainable option, the most economical option, the most rational option.

Who benefits?

Even though we shut down our passenger service, the Jamaican bauxite industry continues to use the railway for transporting their cargo. These multinationals are not known for wasting money. They persist with trains. They must know something the government doesn't.

In whose interest is a transportation policy based on cars and trucks? Who benefits from the closure of the railway? Some very powerful special interest groups, namely the Jamaican trucking industry and the Jamaican motor car dealers, to name a few. When the account of this era in Jamaican history is written, the real legacy, the profound lack of foresight of this crop of leaders will have become apparent.

In the meantime, more power to the government and people of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago for their wise and brave decision to reopen their railway after 40 years! Ours has only been closed for 15 years; it should be much easier for us to restart ours. There is no excuse for being sighted and yet to lack vision!