Trinidad Express
Wednesday, October 4th 2006
Have money, spend money
Government throws dollars, not sense, at traffic woes
By Raffique Shah
Colm Imbert
COME what may, Government will proceed with the proposed Rapid Rail System (RRS).
Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert said so in response that suggestions that Cabinet was proceeding with the RRS without the benefit of a proper feasibility study. The Minister said government's decision was based on a study done by the Indian consulting firm, RITES Ltd.
APETT, commenting on that study, charged: "That document .should not be considered as a feasibility or even a pre-feasibility report, but rather as a Concept Paper." In addition to APETT's concerns over Government's decision to proceed with the project, estimated to cost US$2.5 billion, studies by transportation experts elsewhere in the world show that rail remains a prohibitively expensive mass transit option, and that many countries and cities that opted for that mode would reverse their decisions if they had to do it again.
The main aim of any mass transit system is to be able to efficiently move as many commuters as possible to and from their destinations in the shortest possible time, and in relative comfort. There is little doubt that rail, especially where established many years ago, has met this criteria. But in today's world of modern technology, except for very long-distance travel, rail is proving to be almost an anachronism. Transport Statistics (Great Britain) data show that:
- In highway terms, rail rapid transport systems are so lightly loaded as to be substantially disused. The average flow per track has a range equivalent to 92 to 525 buses per day, each bus containing 20 people. That may be compared with a potential of up to 10,000 vehicles per day for a single lane of motor road managed to avoid congestion. The comparison suggests a catastrophic under use of valuable transport land.
- In all cases the annual cost of capital plus estimated maintenance exceeds the fare receipts by a factor of greater than two.
The authors of that study also said: "Data from 1990 (on comparative fuel consumption) provided the equivalent of 51 passenger miles per gallon for Tyne and Wear and 55 for Strath Clyde (two rail systems). In comparison, buses would return 75 to 125 passenger miles per gallon. We conclude that, with the benefit of hindsight and of this data, none of these (rail) systems would have been built. An alternative may have been bus-ways open to commercial vehicles and to cars at certain times of the day. The modern option may be to control congestion by road pricing."
The T&T Government has opted for the rail alternative (working in conjunction with bus, maxi-taxi and water-taxi support) in the belief that an efficient RRS will encourage many persons to leave their private vehicles at home and use trains. Government has indicated it will enhance the PTSC bus fleet and is considering water-taxis that will connect Port of Spain and San Fernando. It has not projected plans for enhancing and/or policing the maxi-taxi services. Elsewhere in the world, rail attracting motorists has proved to be wishful thinking: if anything, such systems lure more people away from the existing public transport systems (bus, maxi-taxis, taxis and "PH" cars), which defeats the purpose of spending so much money to create an alternative mode of transport.
A main reason for this setback, besides the cultural aspect of "owning one's ride", is that rail does not offer "seamless commuting". In other words, people first need to get from their homes or workplaces to the nearest train stations. Then, having reached stations closest to their destinations, they need to take other means of transport to get to their final destinations. Besides high capital, maintenance and operating costs, this is one of the main weaknesses of the rapid rail system. Dr Rae Furlonge sums up the wooing or motorists to rail this way: "For non-auto transport, like rapid rail to be successful, it must be auto-competitive. This means that it must be widely available and provide a superior level of service. It must be so good that it will be chosen by large numbers of people for a wide variety of trips."
Government has also been advised to seriously consider other options before making a final, irrevocable decision on the RRS. In a response to the RITES report, Drs. Furlonge, Morris and Trevor Townsend said: "They (RITES and PB) should be asked to come up with the best alternative for solving the urban transportation problem. One must understand that a rail system, even if found feasible, may not be the best alternative." Many countries and very large cities are finding that Rapid Bus Transit (RBT), high occupancy vehicles (HOV) and high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on existing or expanded highways is the way to go. In last week's article the point was made that Government's own transportation consultant, Parsons Brinkerhoff, has described the above alternatives as "the wave of the future". Capital costs in the latter are substantially lower than rail systems, as are their maintenance and operating costs. In America's west coast city of San Diego, that country's first "light rail city" (1981), rail accounts for only 0.2 per cent of work trips (Ted Balaker, Transportation Policy at Reason). "San Diego's first (rail) line was cheap, but subsequent extensions ballooned to five times the cost of the original line," he added.
Balaker argued: "Other aspects of San Diego's transportation policy are worth emulating. Take HOT lanes. On the Interstate 15 freeway, special lanes operate next to regular lanes, and since computers collect tolls electronically, there are no toll booths to slow down drivers. Tolls rise and fall with the rise and fall of traffic, which keeps cars moving at about 60 mph even during rush hour. HOT lanes offer commuters an escape route from congestion, and since cars funnel through them faster, they also relax congestion in the regular lanes. Allow buses to use the lanes without paying the toll and transit users can enjoy the unthinkable-fast and predictable travel times. Today, San Diego plans to build more HOT lanes, and many other areas-from San Francisco to Denver to Washington, DC-are moving toward the HOT concept."
Regarding the prospect of wooing people away from using their private vehicles in favour of public transport, a UCLA study, which projects Los Angeles' population to grow to 10.5 million by 2015, argues that "experience tells us that residents will change their travel behaviour as travel speeds change". The study also makes some of the very points against the expansion of rail made in this series, and in columns by Dr Rae Furlonge (Newsday). It continues: "In LA, as in most of North America, rail is an expensive, ineffective use of scarce resources that would be better used to support more cost-effective means of transportation. This includes expansion of the LA County bus system; improvement in the quality of bus services; reduction in bus fares; support for multi-passenger automobile travel; expansion of the HOV system and bus-ways; and implementation of peak-period pricing strategies, such as HOT lanes."
Besides decentralisation (shifting many government ministries, departments and agencies to towns and districts other than POS and San Fernando), which government has refused to even consider, there are many regulatory measures than can be put in place to curb the number of vehicles on the roads at any given time, and more so during peak traffic hours. Within recent years, vehicle ownership in this country has grown to one-in-three, way higher than world average. In Singapore, which is almost one-tenth our size, but with a population of four million and a per capita GDP of US$24,000 (twice that of Trinidad and Tobago), there is a Vehicle Quota System that limits vehicle growth to three per cent per annum. There are also vehicle use restraints through road and congestion pricing. By enforcing these systems, it was found that peak demand for private vehicle-use is on weekends, evenings and holidays, emphasising the need for private cars for recreational purposes.
The Vehicle Quota bidding system, which allocates a limited supply of vehicle certificates, has shown a notable demand despite high car ownership costs. Licensing a vehicle costs US$10,937.00, almost one-third the vehicle's purchase price. The artificially high fixed cost of ownership in Singapore is a barrier to entry (to certain roads at specific times), not vehicle use. Since 2003 the government has been relaxing the quota system, but at the same time managing travel demand more equitably through road pricing. A main pillar of the latter system is car-sharing, which is also being pursued in Japan. The concept of having multiple users share a fleet of vehicles first emerged in Japan in the late 1990s. By then, such system was already in place in several European countries. And recently, the city of London imposed an almost punitive tax on motorists seeking to access central London in private cars.
Whatever restraints are applied to curb the number of private cars using our roads, the measures must be accompanied by enhancement in the public transport system, including car parks where people may leave their vehicles safely for the day, and shuttle services in main cities and towns. Dr Philbert Morris, in his Softcom report presented to the Ministry of Works, made reference to the poor state of City Gate, and recommendations for its improvement to meet international standards. He also pointed to deficiencies in the maxi-taxi system that must be corrected before many commuters are comfortable with it. The report stated: "In many areas taxi stands are the major cause of congestion, because of both their location and the behaviour of drivers. Roadway space for taxi stands is a scarce resource and must be regulated. Stands need to be policed to enforce queue discipline, and to prevent drivers from playing for hire outside the stand. We need to have a clearly established Authority for Public Transport. The maxi-taxis, the main providers of public transport, do not behave in a disciplined fashion because the structure of the system encourages competition on the road."
To sum up, the realities that face government and commuters, and decisions to deal with them are as follows:
- Too many vehicles on limited roadways have led to traffic jams almost around-the-clock not only in approaches to Port of Spain, but in towns as disparate as Chaguanas, Penal and Rio Claro.
- Except for taxation (on both new and foreign-used vehicles), there are no mechanisms in place to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads. There is no obsolescence programme to remove unserviceable vehicles from the system.
- Government intends to proceed with its approximately 80-mile rapid rail project. The estimated capital cost is currently US$2.5 billion. However, there is an abundance of evidence to show that this will, at the very least, double before the project is completed. Maintenance and operating costs are projected to be around TT$3 billion per year. This cost will be borne by taxpayers virtually in perpetuity.
- While there are plans to create some HOV and HOT lanes on highways, they are few and far between, certainly insufficient to impact on the volume of traffic on the nation's roads.
- With government's decision to rejuvenate Port of Spain, the capital city will continue to attract large numbers of people on a daily basis (for work and conducting business). Entrances to the city remain unchanged, and will hardly change because of space constraint. What these tell us is that whatever new traffic measures government takes, there will be gross bottlenecks at the city's entrances.
- The overpass at the CR/Butler intersection will hardly mitigate traffic woes on those two highways, far less solve them.
- Government's plans for expanding existing highways, and building new ones (Golconda to Point Fortin, San Fernando to Mayaro, Arima to Manzanilla) will improve travel times to these far-flung district. But they will not impact on the traffic congestion in approaches to many city and town-centres.
- Rail and water-taxis may provide faster travel times between Port of Spain and San Fernando. In both cases, though, their success will depend on support facilities (like secure car parks, park-and-ride facilities and pedestrian comfort). Both are costly. In the case of water-taxis, the cost of wharves to accommodate passengers must be factored into the projected cost.
- Government has refused to entertain advice from local experts in traffic management and transport engineering.
