Rapid Rail may go underground
By ANDRE BAGOO Thursday, February 12 2009
THE GOVERNMENT may take the billion-dollar Rapid Rail project underground by constructing tunnels for the proposed railway beneath Port-of-Spain, akin to subway systems in metropolitan centres like New York and London, project sources disclosed this week.
French consultants working for the TriniTrain Consortium arrived in the country three months ago and are currently investigating the possibility of taking the $7billion rail system underground as a way of avoiding restrictions of land availability in the southeast section of Port-of-Spain where the Northern Range meets the Caroni Swamp, forming a virtual bottleneck into and out of the city.
Next year, the consultants are expected to submit a final report detailing data collected from their investigation, route information as well as a preliminary design to the National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO), the state company charged with implementing the ambitious rail project.
“An overland system would require us to acquire land, and to build the rail tracks on elevated platforms, that could be expensive,” one source told Newsday. “We are looking at taking it underground, beneath the utilities, as an alternative. The only land acquisition that would be required would then be land for entrances and exits, air ducts and emergency tunnels.”
Asked how such an underground system will deal with flooding, the source said, “there are ways to deal with that.”
“Many people may have ruled underground out because of the coastal soil conditions, but that is not so,” the source added.
Newsday also understands that the Government has briefed TriniTrain, asking them to examine the possibility of extending the reach of the rail system, which consultants say may not be a form of light railway, but a full-fledged rail system with sections tapering off into light rail/tram services in less populous areas.
Originally, the rail system has been planned to be a 72-mile stretch of rail, including one limb across the East-West corridor from Westmoorings to Sangre Grande, and another limb extending North-South from El Socorro to San Fernando.
But the Ministry of Works and Transport is adamant that the rail service should not only serve already existing distributions of populations, but also spread into uninhabited areas, the idea being to encourage development.
Consultants have also been given extended briefs to include designs not only for railway stops, but also designs for urban spaces surrounding planned stations, which may include park areas and walkways. Very little information has been released about the Rapid Rail project since the Government signed a $453million contract for the first phase of the project, involving the design and development, with consortium TriniTrain on April 11, 2008. But behind the scenes, officials working for the consortium, which comprises Bouygues Travaux Publics SA, Alstom Transport SA, and RATP Développement SA, have been quietly conducting site-visits across Trinidad with a view to ascertaining a possible route for the railway as well as the appropriate number of stops required.
They are understood to have encountered several difficulties with regard to information gathering, with maps and plans provided by local bodies and setting out water and electric utilities turning out to be outdated.
One Canadian consultant, who visited the country before Christmas last year, also privately complained that, in the consultant’s view, the rapid rail project would be too expensive and not cost effective. But other consultants differed on this issue.
The total rapid rail project is estimated to cost more than $7billion. At one stage, the estimated cost was stated at $15billion. The second phase of the project, expected to begin next year, involves design and construction while a third phase, expected in 2012, will see the start of operations and maintenance.
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