By C News Live: Rowley: We’ll return to rapid rail system: The rapid rail service, linking the East-West Corridor, will be resurrected under a PNM government, party leader Keith Rowley told a St Ann’s East constituency meeting in Bourg Mulatresse, Santa Cruz, on Wednesday evening. He described T&T as having a chronic transport problem that the current government did not know how to solve, citing its attempts to create more taxi licences as a failure and said the highway extension which is costing $7 billion would have cost $4 billion under the PNM. “We said that we would review the whole idea of a mass transit system to this country,” Rowley told the crowd. “They (the PP coalition) said because the PNM talked about rapid rail and (Colm) Imbert was the minister, they dont want any part of Imbert or the PNM, so out goes rapid rail... and what did they replace it with? Nothing “Well, not nothing,” he continued, “Jack Warner promised to replace it with a tunnel from Tunapuna to Maracas,” a comment greeted with laughter. He described the country as being awash with foreign-used cars with “less and less roads for them to run on. “There are very few options to build highways through the East-West Corridor, where half the population lives,” he said, “but if we build a rapid transit system from Diego Martin to Sangre Grande and a T-junction going to La Romaine, it can become an economic backbone where you can move on a scheduled service and the rest of the countrys transport can feed off that backbone.” He said a rail journey from Sangre Grande to Port-of-Spain would take 45 minutes and would allow citizens to live in the East and work or study in the West (and vice versa) without having to spend hours in traffic jams. The proposed rail network would be subject to a feasibility review first, and if agreed it would take ten years to build and cost $20 billion. But Rowley said the cost would be minimal in comparison to the “$4 billion we waste each year in fuel subsidies,” and that the project would bring economic benefits by creating jobs during the construction phase and by increasing the efficiency of commuting for workers. Rowley, who at one time was Minister of Planning and Development under Patrick Mannings administration, said the Vision 2020 “roadmap” was still valid, despite being scrapped when the Peoples Partnership coalition took power but admitted the timescales would be revised as the target date was no longer achievable. Vision 2030 now looks like forming a major part of the PNMs 2015 general election manifesto and will include the rapid rail system proposed by Mannings government before it lost the 2010 general election. He also spoke about the Caribbean region, saying the “good health of T&T is dependent on the good health of our neighbours.” He told the crowd that Jamaica’s being placed under an IMF (International Monetary Fund) programme to salvage its failing economy and Barbados laying off 3,000 government workers could have negative effects on T&T. Neighbouring islands were heavy purchasers of products manufactured in T&T, he said, and if other islands could not afford to buy T&T products because the market was contracting, it would have a knock-on effect, as the jobs of manufacturers in T&T would be under threat. Read More VIA The Guardian: ow.ly/uOOab
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 20:44:23 +0000
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