The PNM said that their vi­sion for the rapid rail was some­thing they con­cep­tu­alised since 1967 but back in those days we al­ready had an ex­ist­ing cross-is­land net­work. Did they for­get that they shut down Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way and al­lowed squat­ters and oth­ers to build over the train tracks across the coun­try?

If that sys­tem was kept and main­tained by the PNM, to­day we would have no need for a $60 bil­lion rapid rail.

When the project was re­vived around 2007, it quick­ly adopt­ed the name "Rack­et Rail" in­stead of "Rapid Rail" be­cause of the mys­tery sur­round­ing it.

Bare to no in­for­ma­tion was giv­en on the project. No fea­si­bil­i­ty study or any stud­ies al­leged­ly done since 1967 and paid for by the tax­pay­ers were made pub­lic so the coun­try could have had some form of con­sul­ta­tion.

The con­tract was award­ed with­out any fea­si­bil­i­ty study at the time and the first phase of the project cost­ed the coun­try half a bil­lion dol­lars.

At that time we had no clue what the en­tire cost of this rail­way would be and it con­tin­ued to re­main a mys­tery un­til we all for­got about it in 2010 when a new gov­ern­ment took the helm and shelved the project.

Per­haps re­al­is­ing that we could not have af­ford­ed it when tak­ing oth­er ne­ces­si­ties in­to con­sid­er­a­tion?

Dr Row­ley an­nounced this week that the rail­way sys­tem would be around or about $60 bil­lion.

This makes me won­der why we even took an is­sue with a $7 bil­lion high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin which has since proved to be ef­fec­tive.

A so­lu­tion to the traf­fic prob­lems plagu­ing the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly the cap­i­tal, is a se­ri­ous is­sue on the minds of cit­i­zens, how­ev­er, we have to weigh our op­tions in­stead of blind­ly com­mit­ting to projects that ul­ti­mate­ly lead to mass wastage of pub­lic funds.

What about de­cen­tral­is­ing some of the ser­vices in the cap­i­tal? Most or all gov­ern­ment min­istries are al­lo­cat­ed in the cap­i­tal lead­ing al­most half the coun­try in­to Port-of-Spain.

And that's just em­ploy­ees. What about im­prov­ing the bus ser­vices in­to and out of the cap­i­tal and the maxi-taxis at City Gate?

So whilst hear­ing that some­one has a so­lu­tion to our traf­fic woes is mu­sic to our ears, we want to hear now the nit­ty-grit­ty of it lest we end up with an­oth­er half a bil­lion dol­lars worth of box­es of pa­per.

Al­lan He­witt,

Mar­aval