SAVING TAZARA - PART 2 So, if you read the write-up by the late Prof. Tony Judt, well thought out and well written back in 2010, and compared with the thoughts of our own blogger Zambian Economist (which I still retain pinned on top of this page easy reference), you surely should feel the way I felt when I realized how we tend to trivialize the importance of railways (and TAZARA in particular) in this part of the world. Let me strengthen the perspectives and distinction further by highlighting a few modern global developments: --------The American Perspective --------- Speaking on 8 April 2009, President Obama of the USA announced the White House’s vision for spending $9.3 billion in stimulus allocated for railways. Now, all of you know this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future! It is now. It is happening right now. Its been happening for decades. The problem is its been happening elsewhere, not here in an apparent reference to the advanced European-style high-speed tracks which the White House wanted commuter rail in America called to catch up to. The plan laid out by the White House focused on 10 regions of the country to build high-speed rail systems that would be able to pull people off the road, lowering our dependence on foreign oil, lowering the bill for our gas in our gas tanks. “Were also going to deal with the suffocation thats taking place in our major metropolitan areas as a consequence of that congestion. And were going to significantly lessen the damage to our planet. --------The Chinese Perspective--------- In 2012, Chinas top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission approved infrastructure projects valued at 75 billion yuan (US$12 billion), in an effort to stabilize Chinas slowing economic growth. China City Railway Transportation Association said by 2015 total investment in Chinas city railways would amount to 1.2 trillion yuan. By 2020, a total of 40 Chinese cities will have, or will be building, city railways. During the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), the investment in railway infrastructure is poised to reach 2.3 trillion yuan and the length of railway lines in service would reach 120,000 kilometers --------The European Perspective-------- The Marco Polo Program is the European Union’s funding programme for projects which shift freight transport from the road to sea, rail and inland waterways. This means fewer trucks on the road and thus less congestion, less pollution, and more reliable and efficient transport of goods, says the European Commission. The current, second Marco Polo programme runs from 2007-13 and features a programme budget of €450 million Euros. The professors that devised the Marco Polo programme argued that at the time when climate change is a central element in all economic decision making and choices, rail becomes the right alternative ec.europa.eu/transport/marcopolo/: If we compare road to rail, 90% of the total domestic transport emissions come from the road whilst rail is responsible for only 0.6% of diesel emissions. Between 1990 and 2005, the European railways managed to cut their CO2 emissions by 21% (source: UIC). Rail freight is the eco-friendly solution to transport more goods in a better way for the climate. CO2 emissions are indeed 8 times less then the road and rail freight is actually the most energy efficient transport mode (soruce: UIC). It is also the most efficient transport mode from a land use point of view because it avoids congestion and guarantees safety. And one should not forget another of the major advantages of rail: the reduction of exhaust emissions, often highly concentrated in cities because of the cars. It is widely recognised that rail and the freight services offered are many times more efficient on environmental and safety grounds than either road or air. --------------- Tony Judt We no longer see the modern world through the image of the train, but we continue to live in the world the trains made. For any trip under ten miles or between 150 and 500 miles in any country with a functioning railway network, the train is the quickest way to travel as well as, taking all costs into account, the cheapest and least destructive. What we thought was late modernity—the post-railway world of cars and planes—turns out, like so much else about the decades 1950–1990, to have been a parenthesis: driven, in this case, by the illusion of perennially cheap fuel and the attendant cult of privatization. The attractions of a return to “social” calculation are becoming as clear to modern planners as they once were, for rather different reasons, to our Victorian predecessors. What was, for a while, old-fashioned has once again become very modern.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:43:59 +0000
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