By P. Gunasegaram
Tiger is upset today, and as usual thoroughly confused. If not for this column that it had to write, it would have stayed in its nest and slept the day through. But duty calls and Tiger can’t say no and drags itself out of bed to paw a few words on derailing some rail projects — RM90 billion worth.
It would cause anyone indigestion, worry and sleepless nights (which lead to drowsy mornings) if they had read the news today. Between now and 2020, Malaysia will invest an additional RM160 billion in railways, yes RM160 billion. That’s RM23 billion a year.
That’s on top of the RM50 billion that has been spent on railways since 1990. That’s about RM3.6 billion a year which is a whole lot less than the RM23 billion a year between now and 2020.
Tiger laments that the government has NOT provided a breakdown for the RM160 billion expenditure and wonders whatever happened to the proposal to “sequence” mega projects in line with the government’s aim to reschedule those projects which have high import content and which have limited impact on the economy.
That forces Tiger to do some rough calculations with its paws and claws on the sand just beyond its nest but the figures still don’t add up.
No doubt a huge part of that RM160 billion will go for the MRT and LRT projects in Kuala Lumpur which could account for RM60 billion to RM80 billion but Tiger has a niggling concern about that RM40 billion which will go for the high speed rail or HSR between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. More on that in a bit.
And there may be another RM20 billion or so to complete unfinished segments of the RM30 billion double-tracking project which probably has ballooned in cost from the original RM17 billion odd to about RM30 billion and further to about RM50 billion. That too with no discernible benefits from the sections already completed.
That still leaves some RM20 billion to RM40 billion unaccounted for which presumably is a contingency which will eventually be used for the inevitable increased costs of all outstanding projects, especially with oil prices going up which pushes the costs of everything else up.
Here’s the confusing part and we start with that puzzling word called “sequencing”. Apparently that means basically prioritising the projects according to their need and importance, their import content and the impact they will have on the broader economy.
But with rail alone accounting for RM160 billion which seems much higher than originally expected, and with no revision in projects here, which are the projects that are going to be “sequenced”. Nice word that, sequenced. Does it mean postponed, rescheduled or cut altogether?
OK, Tiger likes to slash – that’s better than sequence. So let’s look at what should be slashed, in other words taken off the plans and not considered for the next two decades at least.
Certainly the MRT and LRT projects are too crucial to be cut and are extremely necessary to prevent KL and the Klang Valley area, which is already a transport and traffic nightmare, from descending into a hopeless nightmare. The city and its environs will choke and die if we don’t get these.
Clearly we can’t slash that – let’s grit our teeth and allocate the RM60 billion to RM80 billion till 2020 but lets do everything possible to keep costs down. If we do it smart and cut the corruption and patronage – the blood-sucking middlemen – we could cut as much as RM10 billion from the bill. Let’s just say it will cost RM70 billion.
Then there is the remainder of the double-tracking to be done. With all the money spent, double-tracking has done nothing for train traffic and the highways are congested with trucks. Is there evidence that cargo traffic has increased by leaps and bounds on the completed sections of the double tracks, as the promoters said it would? If there is, show the evidence.
This might be a project to be sequenced, better left for when there is demand for the service. If it is, we could save as much as RM20 billion.
And then there is HSR, touted to cut transport time to Singapore to 90 minutes from city centre to city centre. Air travel time by the way is 45 minutes airport to airport. But those who favour HSR say you don’t have to go through check in and you have to travel to the airports.
HSR promoters fail to mention that you still have to travel to the stations, even if it is in the centre of town but that’s hardly going to be the case. Can you see a high-speed train barrelling its way at over 300 km per hour or whatever speed we have into KL Sentral? Where’s the space for it? Ditto Singapore.
And anyone who has taken the train from London to Paris, like this Tiger has, can tell you that you have to be there early to go through Customs and passport control. So let’s not get carried away with 90 minutes – it will be more like two hours, in which case you might as well take a flight. For a full discussion of the HSR check this out.
Given a choice, Tiger would like to slash this ill-conceived project into oblivion. Already SPAD, the land transport commission, projects the cost at RM40 billion, a third higher than the RM30 billion originally bandied about. How much more will it rise before its finished?
And traffic projections, as with the double-tracking project earlier, are simply out of this world as this article indicates with Bank Negara Malaysia and Ministry of Trade and Industry officials raising eyebrows. Passengers are expected to be 23.7 million a year when air traffic is just three million people now – that’s more than seven times! Truly preposterous.
It doesn’t take an intelligent animal like Tiger to figure out that something does not give and that this HSR project is being pushed through when it is clearly economically unviable, will have questionable benefit, will result in very high import content and will only enable quick travel from KL to Singapore. Whatever for? Tiger leaves it to the intelligent reader to figure this out.
Why not an HSR between KL and Penang or Kota Baru instead? Sorry, I take that back, don’t mean to give further stupid ideas that will be latched on to by some to waste precious resources.
Tiger is upset that in these difficult times when resources should be conserved we seem to be throwing them out of the train windows. What kind of a message are we sending when we announce RM160 billion in rail projects at a time when we need to rationalise (another nice word) our subsidies, balance the budget and bring back a healthy surplus in the net trade of goods and services?
Tiger has irrefutably shown that all we need in rail expenses up to 2020 is no more than RM70 billion, not RM160 billion – we can derail RM90 billion of the rail projects. That’s means RM10 billion a year in rail expenses, not RM23 billion a year, cutting costs by more than half.
Now, let Tiger get back to serious business – regaining lost sleep.
GRRZZZZZZZ!
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