Peter Espeut "GIVE US vision lest we perish" we pray in song many times each year, but I don't want to blame our deficiencies in that area on our Eternal Father. Short-sightedness of the five-year variety is written into the fabric of the politics of our nation, and nowhere is this more visible than in government policy decisions about public transportation.
Henry Ford more than anyone else made the last hundred years the century of the motor car, which profoundly impacted on the design of infrastructure of all cities and nations including our own. It wasn't just that Henry Ford made cars; he mass-produced cars, making them accessible to everyone, not just to a small elite as before.
The car has become a symbol of personal freedom, liberating travellers from train and bus schedules, and the discomfort of mass transit. When I first visited Los Angeles many years ago, I was surprised to discover that they had no bus system or subway train system; Los Angeles was designed and built with the private motor car in mind.
GOT CAUGHT IN MIAMI
A few years ago I got caught in Miami on my way to my aunt's home; I never imagined that in a big city like that the buses would stop running at 6:00 p.m.! There it was assumed that at night, people will get around by car. The process of criss-crossing the USA with four and six and eight-lane highways began in the 1950s to accommodate the motor car, as its ascendancy progressed. (It came at a price: the 20th century was also the age of the ascendancy of greenhouse gases and global warming, the impacts of which we feel in extreme and anomalous weather conditions like late-season hurricanes, and the slow but steady sea level rise.)
That was then. Los Angeles now has a subway system and the buses in Miami run late into the night. The world has changed; the age of the motor car has peaked and we are now moving into the age of mass transit. The fact is that the operation of the motor car is dependent on cheap petroleum, a commodity about which the geopolitical prognosis is uncertain to poor.
The many petroleum products and by-products have many uses, and in case the supply of oil is ever truncated, good substitutes for all have been found- except for one: motor car fuel. Even the land of Henry Ford has woken up and smelled the coffee, and is shifting away from their heavy de-pendence on the motor car and the motor truck.
But as usual, Jamaica is late. Current government policy has increased the numbers of private motor cars and trucks on our roads to (for some people) unbearable levels, and has committed our nation's scarce resources to four-lane highways instead of the railway, and to an increasing oil import bill. Moving people and freight by train is far more fuel-efficient and cheaper that any other means except by ship; trains reduce traffic jams, stress on our roads, and air pollution. Com-mercial trains were running in Jamaica less than twenty years after they began in England.
For decades farmers moved their produce to market and children went to school by train. Young people going to our Catholic Youth Camps in Annotto Bay in the 1960s and 1970s went by train. Many tons of bananas reached bruise-free to Port Antonio by rail (which ran right onto the pier), and Highgate had two train stations: one for passengers and one for bananas. In Kingston, the transfer of imports was facilitated by Railway Piers 1, 2 and 3. Forward-lanning contained reservations for the railway in Newport West, as well as the planned township of Portmore.
ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE
In 1992, shortly after we were married, my wife and I took the train to Balaclava. She has never forgotten it. It was a very enjoyable experience of nature and culture - both inside and outside the rail cars with some stunning scenery and unforgettable characters, and tasty fried fish and bammy.
The railway shut down a few months later, on the grounds that it was losing money. That could have been only by design, as the fares were ridiculously cheap underpriced even and it seemed that no effort was made to save it. Its death was a policy decision to favour the politically powerful trucking lobby.
PLEASANT WHISTLE-TOOTING
The bauxite companies know the value of rail transport, for they have wisely not followed the government's footsteps. My wife and I are daily treated to pleasant whistle-tooting from the bauxite trains passing near our home in Clarendon.
We would be much better off if the (borrowed) money had been applied to building a modern rail transport system in Jamaica, including overhead rapid transit in the capital city, rather than on the ill-fated North Coast Highway and the white elephant of Highway 2000. But then colour and class considerations dominate our decision-making, and certain people don't want to mix with certain other people, which would happen on a good public transportation system. The fact that oil-rich Kuwait and auto mega-manufacturer Japan have lent us these large sums to promote highways over the railway must not be ignored.
It gets worse. Not only have we allocated our scarce re-sources to highways rather than railways (which just indicates a preference), it seems that the contract to operate Highway 2000 includes a clause that if the railway returns and is expanded, the highway concessionaire is due compensation. What we have done is invested in highways at the expense of the railway.
DISINCENTIVE
With Highway 2000 the government has agreed to terms which function as a disincentive a deterrent to restarting the railway. The government which killed commercial rail service in Jamaica continues to drive nails into its coffin.
Questions in the House of Representative about this arrangement caused an unprecedented kerfuffle last week. At last this important issue is getting some attention, although the media have focused on the kafuffle rather than on the issue which precipitated it! Think about it: the French company operating the toll road knows the values of trains the serious competition an efficient rail service will bring; they knew what they were doing when they insisted on that clause. The question is whether the government knew what it was doing. Eternal Father, give us vision lest we perish!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
