Can a new rail system
add value to commerce in Thailand?
By Jon Fernquest |
With recent oil price hikes, transportation costs have become a major contributor to the increased price of goods in Thailand.
The Thai government has been looking for ways to revamp Thailand's transportation system so that goods can be transported from place to place at lower cost.
The improvements being planned for Thailand's railway system were the focus of a Commentary by Bangkok Post news editor Saritdet Marukatat this Tuesday.
The commentary explains some of the shortcomings of the antiquated railway technology left over from the past. The commentary also suggests that the sudden renewed focus on rail may be planning too much, too quickly.
One big issue will surely be who will take charge of carrying out these critical changes.
Should the changes be handled by the existing State Railways of Thailand (SRT) which have lost money for decades? (since 1974, 24 years)
Or by a completely new government agency? By a private company? Or by a joint venture between the government and the private sector?
Railways make very long-term investments so any railway project has to be careful that the investment can actually pay back the investment cost before the technology becomes antiquated and a burden rather than adding value to Thai commerce.
Here is the commentary in full:
COMMENTARY
At last, big plans for SRT
Saritdet Marukatat
Tuesday May 06, 2008
If you build it, they will come." A voice inspires farmer Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams, to turn his cornfield into a baseball ground. After the construction, dead baseball players come out to play the game.
The bigwigs at the State Railway of Thailand and Transport Ministry are now thinking something similar. If new lines and the additional double-track networks are built, they will come. What they mean is that more passengers and freight will go by rail, thus ending SRT's misery.
After enjoying profits in the early years, the agency has been in the red since 1974. Its accumulated losses stand at 51 billion baht. Another 34 billion baht liability will be added for the Airport Rail Link project to be launched next year.
The main reason for losing money looks simple. More roads have been built in the country than railway lines. And they are constantly improved from two to four and even six lanes for key highways across the country.
The rail network in this country covers some 4,043km, less than in neighbouring Burma, which has around 5,500km. Worse, only 280km of the Thai rail is the double-track system, compared with 200km in Malaysia and 600km in Burma.
Thus it is not difficult to imagine why delays are very common for passengers due to that traffic bottleneck. To arrive at a railway station only to find that the train taking them to their destination will come two hours late, is still possible.
The single track limits the driver to run the train at a maximum speed of 120km per hour. Thus it is understandable for railway officials to envy those working at the Highways Department because roads always come first when policy-makers talk about transport infrastructure.
Suddenly, last Thursday, something favourable to the railway agency happened at a transport meeting. All the big shots agreed that it was time to make a serious effort to develop the railways.
So now the government will spend 39 billion baht to improve the tracks, including laying more double tracks.
That won't be enough. In the long term, around 367 billion baht will be spent for new and wider tracks covering 2,644km. The railway jargon for this is "standard gauge," which is 1.435 metres wide, compared to the one-metre gauge system being used now. Thailand will eventually have high speed trains running at 160km per hour from Bangkok to Nakhon Sawan, Pattaya, Chanthaburi and Nakhon Ratchasima. The bottom line for this is that focus should be shifted to trains because they can carry people and goods in large amounts at the same time. Logistics costs will be cut and there will be even less pollution especially in the long term when electricity, not diesel, will be the main power to haul trains.
Should train enthusiasts give the government a big round of applause? The answer could be "No." One conclusion of this ambitious plan is that it is going too far, too quickly.
There is no argument the SRT needs the double-track system. The on-time schedule and faster trains which would result will lure people to take the train and factory owners to transport their freight. But will it need to add the standard gauge into the existing system? Whether the tracks should be widened from one metre to 1.435m has been the subject of debate among train officials for several years. Wider tracks mean trains can run faster, that's true. But new technologies can also help trains on the one-metre track to run faster, too. The money to build the new system should be used to expand the train network to more areas in the country. Only 600km have been added to the railway map since the establishment of the SRT to replace the Royal State Railways of Siam in 1951. That was 57 years ago.
It would be easy to equip the SRT with high speed trains, but whether it would be worth it remains a question. Other countries such as Japan, France, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have those kind of trains. But that happened after all basic train infrastructure was put in place, including the double-track system, and enough coaches to serve passengers, enough locomotives to pull the trains and qualified staff to run the organisation.
"Don't think too far ahead about high speed trains. Let's find a way to have our present trains run quicker first and think about other things later." That's what one senior SRT official said about what should be the priority for his agency.
Saritdet Marukatat is News Editor, Bangkok Post.
(Source: Bangkok Post, op-ed section, 06-05-08, Saritdet Marukatat, temp-link)
Vocabulary:
State Railway of Thailand (SRT) - the government agency running the railway lines throughout Thailand
add value - the amount of value added to a good or service by a step in the process of producing it (for example, an automobile manufacturer "adds value" to auto parts when it builds a car from them)
commerce - all the activities involved in buying and selling goods and services
revamp - make changes to improve something
shortcomings - faults and weaknesses
antiquated - not used anymore, old and old-fashioned
left over - remaining when most has been used and disappeared
renewed - done again
focus - spending time on one thing or task (rather than many)
renewed focus - once again spending a lot of time on this one thing
carrying out - doing, executing a plan
critical - important
a burden - causes a lot of difficulty, worry, and hard work (a heavy load to carry)
new lines - new railway tracks for trains to travel over
a network, a transportation network - the roads, flights, train lines, or shipping lines that goods and people are transported from place to place over
single tracks - a railway system with tracks running in one direction only (this means that trains must sometimes wait while a train running in the opposite direction is using the track)
double tracks, double-track networks - a railway system with tracks running in both directions (this means that trains don't have to wait to use tracks and can go faster)
in the red - company losing money, no profit
a liability - borrowed money that has to be paid back
traffic - trucks, cars, trains, airplanes, and ships passing traveling through a transportation network ("internet traffic" is people using the internet)
traffic bottleneck - a place in a transportaton network that slows the whole network down, because traffic can't pass through this point
big shots - VIPs, the powerful rich people who make decisions that effect the public
jargon - specialised language (used in a job or by experts)
railway jargon - the special language used to talk about railways and trains
the bottom line - the most important point
focus should be shifted - limited resources should be moved to some other use
logistics costs - the costs of transporting goods from factory to store (also warehouse costs)
train enthusiasts - people whose hobby is trains, often building and running model trains
big round of applause - many people clapping their hands and approving
ambitious - has very hard to achieve goals
an ambitious plan - a plan with hard to achieve goals
going too far, too quickly - doing too much in a short time (and thus risking failure)
lure people - attract, persuade people to come
the subject of debate - the issue or problem that people are discussing and evaluating (good points, bad points) before making a decision
coaches to serve passengers - train cars (that people sit in when traveling from place to place)
should be the priority - should the most important goal
