The Editor, Sir:

Minister of Transport Mike Henry has announced his intention to restart the railway service by next year. He seems quite enthused by the fact that there is a line of credit from China that will facilitate the required repairs to the lines to accommodate the trains.

This is welcome news for those who believe that the resuscitation of the railway is good for sectors of the travelling public and the economy. For others, and I am among those, it is evident that emotional and erroneous sentimentality has predominated prudence and pragmatic economics.

Public transport

Minister Henry should be made to establish the viability of this railway project. Let him tell this country not just how much can be borrowed but how much he is prepared to subsidise the resuscitated railway in order to keep it running. Is there any study that indicates there is a demand for the service that has the capacity to pay its economic cost? Public transport is already the beneficiary of significant subsidy via the Jamaica Urban Transit Company.

It is accepted that the subsidising of urban commuting is an inescapable reality. Is the Government in a position at this time to increase the losses that prevail in the transport sector? Let us not be misled by arguments of freight haulage profit offsetting the passenger operations. This is not going to happen, especially in the immediate future, because the only freight that makes economic sense for the railway is bauxite. It will take a lot of bauxite haulage to offset the losses on an expanded resuscitated railway.

Things are different

Road transportation has replaced the railway for economic reasons. Very simply - to utilise the railway necessitates multiple handling of cargo and additional transportation costs to and from the railway. The railway was vital when it was competing against the horse and buggy and some trucks of low tonnage haulage capacity. Today, things are different. The trailer is loaded at the factory and goes straight to the client. Who is going to use the railway as preference over direct haulage?

Except for bauxite haulage, the railway has no positive economic relevance in our economy today. Can't it be recognised that if the railway was a viable or potentially profitable proposition, the private sector would have hawked it long, long ago? The elected government will do whatever it feels like doing but it needs to be reminded that personal agenda should never take precedence over what is better for the people.

Borrowed money spent to resuscitate the railway will only increase our debt burden and reduce our capacity to repay.

I am, etc.,

LUCIUS C. WHITE

Kingston