Building EastCoast Railway Infrastructure For Economic Development

The ambitious RM60 billion project to build east train ralway project.

Setelah hampir 6 tahun DS Najib menjadi PM, ini lah masa yang baik untuk DS Najib buat infrastruktur baru bagi negara.

DS Najib beruntung kerana semua pihak majoriti menyokong kepimpinan beliau. Tidak seperti Mahathir selepas 6 tahun terpaksa struggle politik kerana mendapat tentangan Ku Li-Musa Hitam yang akhirnya buat UMNO jadi parti haram pada 1988.

Polemik politik tidak memberi faedah kepada negara. Kita perlu fokus kepada politik pembangunan. DS Najib perlu kembangkan ekonomi, bina infrastruktur bagi pembangunan ekonomi dan pertumbuhan ekonomi.

Posting ini WZWH outline EastCoast Railway Infrastructure untuk pembangunan ekonomi negara terutama khasnya untuk Pahang, Terengganu dan Kelantan.

Faedah projek infrastruktur ini untuk bangunkan pertumbuhan ekonomi di Daerah Bentong, Bera, Temerloh, Maran (sekali gus pembangunan gugusan Felda Jengka), Pekan ( Inland Port dan Hinterland bagi industri automatif), dan Kuantan.

Seterusnya Negeri Terengganu -Daerah Kemaman, Laluan Petronas Kertih-Paka, Dungun, Marang, Kuala Terengganu, Setiu, dan Besut.

Negeri Kelantan - Daerah Pasir Putih, Bachok, Jeli, Kota Bahru-dan Tumpat

Finance projek ini ada cara dan kaedahnya.

Bagi pembaca blog WZWH yang serious sila baca article-article di bawah betapa pentingnya Building Eastcoast Railway-new route and double track kepada pembangunan ekonomi.

Why didn’t railways do more, such as spurring a higher rate of economic growth?

The railways helped transform British society. Towns and industry could have grown to a limited extent without the railways but the scale of this transformation could only have been accomplished as a result of the development of this new means of mass and rapid transport.

Railways were the most important infrastructure development in India from 1850 to 1947. In terms of the economy, railways played a major role in integrating markets and increasing trade.

Railways are usually considered as one of the most important innovations that fostered the transition of Latin America to economic growth of the direct growth contribution of the railway technology in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay since 1870.

In Latin America, for example, investment decisions driven by the interests of the companies that have taken control through privatisation have reshaped freight railways over the last 20 years. This has brought some economic and social development benefits, undoubtedly -- Brazil’s export-oriented economic growth could not have happened without the freight railway improvements that followed privatisation.

“Transport has affected economic development from the beginning of human civilization.”

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Freight rail is critical to commerce and the health of local, national, and global markets. No other form of ground transportation can move the sheer volume of goods and products to the global marketplace like freight rail does. Rail fuels economic growth safely, efficiently, and in a more environmentally responsible way.

As the economy grows, so will demand for freight transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation forecasts demand will rise 88% by 2035 from 2002 levels. This will inevitably create a strain on the nation’s rail corridors which can only be addressed through strategic investments.

Improvements to the BNSF Corridors of Commerce will relieve chokepoints on the national rail system and allow it to respond to the nation’s call to increase economic output.

Investments in the Corridors of Commerce create:

Economic Stimulus – Every $1 invested in rail systems (track, locomotives, bridges, etc.) returns $3 to the American economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. That’s a 200% return on investment.

New Jobs – Collectively, the rail activity in the Corridors support over 162,000 jobs. One direct freight rail job supports another 4.5 jobs in factories, power plants, distribution centers and other businesses served by rail. The ripple effect of job creation continues throughout the economy.

Business Expansion Opportunities – Rail transportation is an economic engine. For example, the BNSF Alliance Intermodal Facility north of Fort Worth, Texas (on the TransCon and MidCon Corridors) is instrumental to the Alliance Global Logistics Hub which encompasses more than 200 separate companies with over 28,000 employees.

Partnering with the State of Kansas, a similar logistics hub is planned south of Kansas City on the TransCon and is expected to generate, along with the separate independently-developed logistics park, over 13,000 jobs.

Reduced Costs for Companies – Rail transportation is one of the most cost-effective modes to move freight. Supply chain costs rose for the first time in two decades, up 21% from 2003-2007 as percent of GDP (1.4 trillion in 2007). Leveraging America’s freight railroads, the most affordable in the world, can maintain a competitive advantage for American businesses in the global marketplace.

The Tower 55 project alone is forecasted to reduce shipper supply chain costs by over $100 million by 2022.

The Role of Transport in Economic Development

Efficient transport is a critical component of economic development, globally and nationally. Transport availability affects global development patterns and can be a boost or a barrier to economic growth within individual nations. Transportation investments link factors of production together in a web of relationships between producers and consumers to create a more efficient division of production, leverage geographical comparative advantage, and provide the means to expand economies of scale and scope. Transport’s contribution to economic development includes the following:

• Network effects—linking more locations exponentially increases the value and effectiveness of transport
• Performance improvements—reducing cost and time for existing passenger and freight movements increase transport’s contribution to economic growth
• Reliability—improves time performance and reduces loss and damage, thus reducing economic drag
• Market size-access to wider markets adds to economies of scale in production, distribution, and consumption, thereby increasing economic growth
• Productivity—transport increases productivity gained from access to a larger and more diverse base of inputs such as raw materials, parts, energy, and labor, and broader markets for more diverse outputs

Transport has affected economic development from the beginning of human civilization. Economic development focused on the confluence of transport systems — early cities grew up on natural bays and ports, and on rivers and lakes where transport was available. Romans built roads to unify and provide access to their far-flung empire. Geographic characteristics such as proximity to oceans, seas, and waterways, plains, mountains and the location of oases defined early transport systems (e.g., the “Silk Road” went from oasis to oasis, and city to city, where there were no reliable water or road routes). 

The industrial revolution generated new transport demands, which required higher volumes of coal, iron ore, and other materials; this led to canal construction that extended water transport, and to early railway development.

“Rail freight transport uses two-thirds less energy per ton-km than road transport in the US.”

Railway Costs and Cost of Alternatives

Railways are an efficient transport mode—concentrating people and goods and transporting them over a fixed route using one prime mover and multiple carriages and freight wagons.

Rail transport is generally more fuel efficient than road transport; in the US, rail freight is on average 63 percent more fuel efficient than road transport. Railways use a unique technology that has very low friction — based on steel wheels and steel rails. The most significant forces that must be overcome, besides the weight of the goods being transported, are rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag as speeds increase. Next to water transport, rail transport is the most energy efficient means of moving large volumes of goods and passengers. On average, inland water transport, using barges and a towing or pushing ship, is about 35 percent more fuel efficient than rail freight, but compared to water transport, rail is often less circuitous and thus, often as energy efficient.

Beyond energy efficiency, transport by inland water or rail can also achieve significant economies of scale in that a single vessel (barges + tow) or rail train (locomotives + wagons or carriages) can move many tons of freight or passengers at once making it operationally highly efficient when there is enough volume to use available capacity.

Railways are ideal to transport high volumes of bulk commodities or passengers. Rail transport costs for bulk materials are generally quite low—typically less than $0.03 per ton-kilometer; passenger transport is equally inexpensive, typically less than $0.10 per passenger-kilometer. On relatively dense freight oriented railways, rail transport can average less than $0.02 per ton-kilometer; rail passenger transport can be much less than $0.10 per passenger-kilometer, depending on how transport is subsidized and on the density of passengers.

Price variations arise from government policy choices, management effectiveness, design characteristics, and differences in volume, cost structures, competitive environments, commodity mixes, geography, haul lengths, among many other factors.

The cost advantages of efficient well-run rail transport can boost competitiveness among manufacturers and shippers in domestic and global markets and exert competitive pressure on road transport prices. Similarly, efficient well-run passenger transport can increase labor mobility—expanding the labor pool and economic development outward from urban centers.