ASIA: Huge Cost of Untangling Traffic Jams Stumps Megacities

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jacqueline Lee

SINGAPORE, Jun 4 1997 (IPS) - Mass rail-based transport systems are touted as the means to untangle traffic jams in Asia’s megacities, but their steep cost often leaves developing countries with money- losing ventures difficult to keep afloat.

Light railway systems are planned for many congested Asian megacities from India to Indonesia, where planners find them a relatively cheap, mass-based means of moving people around. They are also less pollutive to urban environments.

Many experts advocate them as a means to counter many Asians’ growing dependence on cars, which clog up streets and have become the main source of street-level pollution.

But efficient, rail-based transport may become too expensive to build and maintain and in the long run, analysts say.

The capitals of New Delhi, Jakarta and Metro Manila are grappling with the huge financial cost of constructing their trains to keep up with the rapid pace of urbanisation.

These governments have resorted to raising fares and inviting the private sector to undertake projects in order to stretch transport budgets, but these and other solutions do not seem to be enough.

“The magnitude of financial requirements for developing the urban transport sector has not been estimated,” Koji Kashiwaya, president and chief executive officer of the AIDEC Management Company Pte Ltd, told the conference.

“It undoubtedly exceeds available resources and with central and local governments already strapped for revenues, the search for urban transport financing will not be easy in the next decade,” Kashiwaya said.

For instance, heavy losses have hit the the Philippines’ 170 million U.S. dollar Light Rail Transit since it became operation in 1985, said the country’s transportation and communication undersecretary, Cesar Valbuena.

Interest on debts are piling up and the government is “hard pressed” to service them, he said.

“The Metro Manila LRT has performed exceptionally well by international standards,” Valbuena said. But its financial situation has “remained poor” since the start of commercial operation.

Nearly 1.5 billion Filipinos have used the LRT, which cuts through the busiest portions of the Philippine capital, with an average of 370,000 people riding it daily.

In India, the government is already groaning from the estimated cost of a proposed Integrated Multi-Modal Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS) to be built in the next 10 years.

The project, to cost some 2.2 billion dollars, will require huge funds to buy up large tracts of private agricultural and urban land that rail corridors will criss-cross.

While officials concede the MRTS will provide New Delhi’s commuting population of more than 10 million a safe, speedy and affordable mode of transportation, they doubt its financial viability in the long run.

“(MRT projects) have not generally been found to be financially viable in most cities of the world despite their large economic benefits,” said N.P. Singh, secretary of India’s Department of Urban Development.

Increasing fares is not really the solution, he says, because that is not without its “drastic effects” on ridership and could defeat the purpose of a mass transit system.

Singh said financing for the project will be met partly by soft loans courtesy of Japan and joint venture contributions from the national and city governments.

As in Metro Manila, the New Delhi government is expected to develop real estate surrounding the MRTS and offer them for commercial lease to augment operational costs.

Singh said India is looking toward the private sector for investments in the transport industry. “It welcomes both local and foreign investments. A number of fiscal and monetary incentives have been announced,” he said.

In Jakarta, rapid migration from rural to urban areas has energised commercial and industrial activity in the Indonesian capital. Now home to nine million people, the city is seen to swell to 12 million by the year 2010.

Because of its growing traffic problems, officials are recommending a “highly efficient and highly reliable” MRT system for use by the year 2015.

It is not going to come cheap. The first phase of the project will begin in the year 2002, but pre-operating costs from land purchases alone have already been estimated to reach more than 20 million dollars.

As noted by Iskandar Abubakar, director of the Urban Transport and Traffic Systems Development, the MRT’s establishment would entail “committing large sums of government funds toward capital expenditure”.

Urban experts say the MRT is projected to have a “daily patronage” of some 1.13 million passengers by the year 2030.

“Although materially better off than the previous generations, modern Jakartans are subject to a lower quality of life brought about by increasing pollution and longer travel times,” Iskandar said.

In most countries the scale of transport funding is “quite large”, while in some, resources are determined by the importance attached to the sector, said Kashiwaya, who was involved with project financing for the World Bank and other institutions.

For instance, he noted that the transport systems in Singapore and Hong Kong have done well. But those in less economically developed countries, experiencing financing shortfalls, have met with a host of problems.

Transport specialists said they are aware of the enormous capital required to finance mass transport systems and are now looking beyond the traditional rail-based systems.

Trevor Griffin, a consultant involved with rail technology projects in the United Kingdom, spoke of the “Ultra Light Rail” or ULR, calling it a cheaper alternative to conventional MRTs.

“Conventional light rail has seen considerable growth over the past two decades but there has been widespread concern that for many potential applications the costs have been too high,” Griffin explained.

The ULR uses smaller vehicles that resemble electric-operated trams. Able to carry 5,000 passengers per hour, it can run on standard railways at street level without need for elevated tracks. It is best used together with other modes of transport, like shuttles and feeder buses for peripheral routes.