Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Fri­day re­spond­ed to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's $61.3 bil­lion bud­get, which was pre­sent­ed last Mon­day.To­day, we con­clude the re­pro­duc­tion of ex­tracts from his speak­ing notes, which were re­leased by the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader.We have ab­solute­ly no doubt that the next Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will be a PNM Gov­ern­ment and we do not seek of­fice and then pro­ceed to prac­tise on stage when the lights go on. We come ready!...and we ready now!!!!

It is with this con­fi­dence that we can now be­gin to out­line some of our poli­cies and com­mit­ments to filled the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with re­al hope.De­spite the mis­guid­ed at­ti­tude and in­dif­fer­ence of those on the oth­er side, many trans­port stud­ies over the years have iden­ti­fied the need for the in­tro­duc­tion of a com­muter rail­way sys­tem in Trinidad, goin­gas far back as the 1967 Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

More re­cent­ly, 16 years ago, in 1996, a study by in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tants, Can­sult, jus­ti­fied the need for a rapid rail sys­tem. Spe­cial­ist con­sul­tants from In­dia came to the same con­clu­sion some years lat­er.

In study­ing traf­fic along our main east-west and north-south cor­ri­dors, Can­sult found that the num­ber of peo­ple trav­el­ling along the East-West Cor­ri­dor alone was 21,000 per hour in each di­rec­tion and pre­dict­ed an in­crease to 28,000 by 2015. How­ev­er, an up­date by Can­sult found that the traf­fic had in­creased to 30,000 peo­ple per hour by 2007. In oth­er words, the traf­fic on our main roads had in­creased at many times the rate pre­dict­ed ear­li­er.

Al­though hun­dreds of thou­sands of our cit­i­zens face the dai­ly grind and mad­den­ing frus­tra­tion of traf­fic log jams, every day, and face hours in cars to and from work and school, the oth­er side ap­pears un­aware that the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark for the in­tro­duc­tion of a mass tran­sit sys­tem is 10,000 per­sons per hour.

Fur­ther, once traf­fic reach­es 20,000 per­sons per hour, it is well es­tab­lished that a rail­way is the on­ly ef­fec­tive mass tran­sit so­lu­tion be­cause bus­es sim­ply can't han­dle these traf­fic vol­umes, nor do road­ways ex­ist in Trinidad to ac­com­mo­date the thou­sands of bus­es that would be re­quired to move peo­ple quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.

Traf­fic con­ges­tion is neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the coun­try's pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Trinidad and To­ba­go has the high­est lev­el of traf­fic in the re­gion. It is a clear in­di­ca­tion of the in­abil­i­ty of our coun­try's in­fra­struc­ture to meet new and grow­ing trans­porta­tion de­mands. Fif­teen years ago, we crossed the traf­fic thresh­old for the in­tro­duc­tion of a rail­way, and five years ago we had gone past this thresh­old by 50 per cent.

It is even worse now, and it is rea­son­able to con­clude that in 2013 that we have more than twice the vol­ume of traf­fic at which any sen­si­ble coun­try would seek to im­ple­ment a mass tran­sit sys­tem. Some­body on the oth­er side must tell the par­ents and chil­dren who wake up at weird hours all over the coun­try to face, twice dai­ly, the cer­tain traf­fic jams in an ever tight­en­ing grid­lock on vir­tu­al­ly every route, the day or year when this prob­lem will come to an end.

In June 2008, a con­tract was award­ed to the Trini­train Con­sor­tium for the first phase of a project to de­sign and con­struct a rail sys­tem for Trinidad. Phase 1 in­volved plan­ning, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of fea­si­ble al­ter­na­tives, con­cep­tu­al de­sign and pre­lim­i­nary en­gi­neer­ing of the pre­ferred so­lu­tion. Phase 2 of the project in­volved de­tailed de­sign and con­struc­tion and the fi­nal phase in­volved com­mis­sion­ing and op­er­a­tion of the sys­tem.

The cost of Phase 1, the en­gi­neer­ing phase, was ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$500 mil­lion, with the fi­nal cost of the rail­way project, when ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$10 bil­lion. To put these costs in­to per­spec­tive, the cost for plan­ning and en­gi­neer­ing of our crit­i­cal­ly need­ed rail­way project was five per cent of the cost of con­struc­tion, well with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark of ten per cent for sim­i­lar projects.

Com­pare this to the cost of con­sul­tan­cy fees and oth­er non-con­struc­tion costs for the bil­lion-dol­lar Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, now be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the present Gov­ern­ment, which, at al­most $500 mil­lion, are es­ti­mat­ed at al­most 50 per cent of the con­struc­tion cost of that project, or ten times the per­cent­age for en­gi­neer­ing work on the pro­posed rail­way project. Sim­i­lar out­ra­geous non-con­struc­tion costs are ex­pect­ed for the du­bi­ous Pe­nal Hos­pi­tal project, ear­marked to be giv­en on a plat­ter with­out ten­der to the in­fa­mous SNC-Lavalin com­pa­ny, which has been banned by the World Bank, among oth­er scan­dalous con­tract awards by this dis­cred­it­ed regime.

Com­pare the $10 bil­lion cost for a na­tion­wide mass tran­sit rail sys­tem with the $ 7.0 bil­lion High­way which may not reach Pt Fortin from Debe.

By May 2010, most of Phase 1 of the rail­way project had been com­plet­ed.

The route align­ment for both the east-west line from Diego Mar­tin to San­gre Grande and the north-south line from Port of Spain to San Fer­nan­do had been se­lect­ed and de­signed; the sta­tion lo­ca­tions had been iden­ti­fied, the pre­lim­i­nary de­sign of the rail­way sta­tions and de­pots com­plet­ed; the land ac­qui­si­tion re­quire­ments had been es­tab­lished; the le­gal frame­work for the new rail­way au­thor­i­ty had been pre­pared; the re­quired rolling stock had been iden­ti­fied; the staffing and or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture of the rail­way had been for­mu­lat­ed; con­tract doc­u­men­ta­tion was well ad­vanced; the main­te­nance re­quire­ments for the rail­way had been de­ter­mined, and so on.

What did the UNC Gov­ern­ment do? Bad mouth it and throw it out. What did they re­place it with? A sneaky at­tempt at invit­ing pro­pos­als for a rail sys­tem from Port-of- Spain to Ari­ma to give one of their friends a con­tract . When caught and ex­posed, they aban­doned the idea. What has the coun­try achieved to solve the traf­fic prob­lem so far ..zilch, na­da, ab­solute­ly noth­ing as the prob­lem gets worse every day.

The orig­i­nal project was split in­to seg­ments, to al­low easy im­ple­men­ta­tion and to spread the cost over sev­er­al years. All this hap­less Gov­ern­ment had to do was to prop­er­ly in­vite ten­ders for the de­tailed de­sign and con­struc­tion of the ini­tial rail­way seg­ments, and to move full speed ahead. If they had done so, by now, the ini­tial east-west line from Port of Spain to St Au­gus­tine and the ini­tial north-south line to Ch­agua­nas would have been com­plet­ed by now, and thou­sands of com­muters would be trav­el­ling to work and school in com­fort on a mod­ern rapid rail­way, get­ting to work in min­utes rather than hours.

This project would have tru­ly brought Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry and cre­at­ed the stim­u­lus for eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, with new com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ments and new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties spring­ing up to serve the new tran­sit sys­tem. That would have been re­al wel­comed eco­nom­ic growth rather than hav­ing to cheat with ran­dom num­bers.

But like every­thing else it was a PNM ini­tia­tive it had to be bad-mouthed, lied about and dis­card­ed in the same way they did with the OPVs, Sautt, and the Waller­field In­dus­tri­al Park. They al­most wrecked UTT. They aban­doned the rail­way project and wast­ed all of the im­por­tant pre-con­struc­tion and plan­ning work that had been done. They wast­ed 3 years blam­ing the PNM for every evil un­der the sun, whilst twid­dling their thumbs. They have pro­posed no vi­able al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tion to our traf­fic and trans­porta­tion woes.

Af­ter all, if the present Gov­ern­ment could spend bil­lions of dol­lars in the Prime Min­is­ter's con­stituen­cy and else­where on every man­ner of grandiose and un­nec­es­sary mega project, de­signed pri­mar­i­ly to ben­e­fit friends and fam­i­ly, we can cer­tain­ly do bet­ter by im­ple­ment­ing a much-need­ed in­fra­struc­ture project that will ben­e­fit every sin­gle per­son in Trinidad.

Up on our re­turn to of­fice we will im­me­di­ate­ly ap­proach the IDB for a re­view of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion; all ex­ist­ing da­ta and en­gi­neer­ing work done to date. Once the word is a go, then the PNM com­mits to giv­ing the high­est pri­or­i­ty to build­ing a mass trans­porta­tion rail sys­tem to fea­ture ser­vice on a back­bone from Diego Mar­tin to San­gre Grande with a south­ern com­po­nent to La Ro­maine.

We will seek to ob­tain IDB long-term con­ce­sion­ary fund­ing to fi­nance this project which will pos­i­tive­ly change the face and cir­cum­stances of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the next cen­tu­ry. The PNM, the par­ty of de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try, will once again shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­vel­op­ing this coun­try and its peo­ple.

We ea­ger­ly look for­ward al­so to the many eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of the high lo­cal in­put in­to the build­ing of the route ways over a pe­ri­od of sev­er­al years and the phased re­duc­tion of the in­tractable bil­lion dol­lar fu­el sub­sidy on com­ple­tion.