THE Cabinet Committee on economic affairs on Tuesday approved a proposal for jointly establishing light rail transit in Narayanganj by a Singapore-based company with the government through public private partnership. If established, it will be the first electric short haul train in the country.
But establishment and maintenance of such electric trains, according to media reports from Singapore, is highly expensive. The LGD has projected that 1,20,000 passengers would be carried by the service daily on an average. Two routes – 11 kilometres between Nitaiganj and Signboard, and 12 kilometres from Chattogram Road and Panchabati – would be laid by the governments of Bangladesh and Singapore. A feasibility study would be conducted by both the governments to assess the cost of the project.
In Singapore, the light metro rail was introduced in 1999 as a supplement to both the bus and Mass Rapid Transit networks. A 7.8-kilometre Bukit Panjang LRT was opened firstly as part of Singapore’s LRT, a fully automated system and developed by Adtranz, Keppel Corporation and Gammon Construction at a cost of Singapore $285million. In March, the authorities in Singapore decided to overhaul the ageing system at a cost of Singapore $344 million.
Any transportation proposal has to be worth its weight in salt–and then some. We can’t even properly maintain double decker buses in the capital which look as if they have been running since World War One. Why should we then invest millions of taxpayer monies on routes linking Narayanganj which is not even our capital or port city?
Any mega project must be inherently sustainable otherwise it should not be implemented. Our revenues from city buses aren’t enough to maintain the vast majority of double decker buses. Was a revenue to cost assessment done in the case of the Narayanganj transit routes to ensure that the commuters can pay the amounts required to sustain the trains?
Such mega projects should be done strictly on a cost/revenue basis. If the projected revenues can’t cover the direct and fixed costs then such projects should be scrapped. Projects based on flights of fancy will only be a burden for future taxpayers.
