Gov’t Open to Partnerships to Restore Rail Service

Minister of Transport and Mining, Hon. Audley Shaw, says the Government is committed to getting the trains rolling again and is prepared to forge the necessary partnerships in the undertaking.

He said the revival of islandwide rail service will take “several hundred millions of US dollars”, and will include “putting in a new bridge to go to Spanish Town, and that alone is going to cost about US$8 million.”

The Minister indicated, however, that the investment is worthwhile, and will reduce the costs now associated with transporting people and goods across the island and rehabilitating damaged road infrastructure.

“Our roads can’t keep up with the damage from all the goods that we have to transport. When we have railway lines, we can carry goods as well as people,” he pointed out.

“So… I am going to revive the railway service and if we have to do it in partnership with overseas people, who have technology and money, then we will carry out that partnership and get it done,” he emphasised.

“When I listen to the history, that Jamaica was the fourth country in the world to have a railway system and now we have none, it is totally unacceptable,” Mr. Shaw said, stressing that it is time to get the train service going again.

The Minister was speaking during a recent tour of the Jamaica Railway Corporation’s (JRC) terminus in West Kingston.

There are plans to restore the Kingston rail service, starting with a Culture Yard tour by 2023, under the Jamaica Social Intervention Community Rail Project, which involves collaboration between the University of Technology Jamaica (UTech) and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom (UK).

The plan is to transport passengers by train from Kingston to Three Miles and then to Culture Yard in Trench Town.

General Manager of the JRC, Donald Hanson, said the work being done at the Kingston terminus “is the start of something major to come”.

“This initiative is just going to take us to Three Miles; but once we start, we don’t think we will stop. We want to go all the away to Montego Bay,” he said.

“We have a tourist train that will soon come on stream from Montego Bay to Appleton Estate, and the second phase is to get this train to Spanish Town, and then from Spanish Town, we can go to Appleton. But our major problem is the bridge over the Sandy Gully. It is over 800 feet long and it’s basically down in the Sandy Gully,” he pointed out.

Indicating that there is an appetite for the railway, Mr. Hanson said the JRC has been receiving requests for freight service.

“We are preparing some coaches right now, some equipment to start carrying the freight,” he said.

Head of UTech’s School of Engineering, Oneil Josephs, who was also on the tour, said the cooperation between the institution and the University of Birmingham will infuse significant technical knowledge and expertise in Government’s rail restoration programme.

The universities have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the Jamaica Social Intervention Community Rail Project.

This will support community development while preserving and promoting the history of rail in Jamaica through museums and other educational outlets.

Technical Director for the project, Roy Howell, said there are some equipment and machinery at the Kingston terminal which are still operational.

“The workshop is very much active. The school train project is being maintained from here,” he informed.

Mr. Howell further advised that “there are about nine trains in the workshop that are in various states of disrepair.”

“One is about 80 per cent complete [and] we hope to have it done as soon as we can get a radiator for it,” he said.

The school train service, which was piloted in January, takes students from Old Harbour and Linstead to Spanish Town, where they are transported to their respective schools via Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) buses.

British High Commissioner to Jamaica, Her Excellency Judith Slater, as well as Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica, Her Excellency Emina Tudakovic, also participated in the tour.