Dar can improve rail commuter transport, but with careful layout

-project geared at finding out how to improve rail transport as a commuting alternative. It would be another step after an initial effort that saw then Transportation Minister Dr. Harrison Mwakyembe forcefully pushes the corporation to put up a commuter channel from the city railway station to Pugu. It helped many people.

With modernization taking place all over the city and the country at large, it is long overdue that a sharp eye is directed at the situation of commuter transport in the city with a bid to easing it. This is even more so with a convergence of environmental measures and strategic conflicts pushing up the price of oil on the world market, which could sooner than later impact on commuter bus fares, etc. That sort of change has a telling impact on the public mood, many people being pushed to despair, especially with unemployment.

The preliminary study that JICA is pursuing is to collect data on the state of rail infrastructures from the main station to Pugu on the one hand and Ubungo on the other, to see what improvements need to be made. A briefing on that aspect showed that the proper intention is to construct railway stops that aren’t quite different from major bus stops in terms of their facilities and commercial networks. This means that the commuting will be frequent enough so that trading thrives - not one or two transits per day as of old.

That is already a tall order given the usual means that public corporations can muster on their own, and the difficulties they have perennially faced to create synergies with private investors. With cargo freight a semblance of workable arrangements was coming up with major importers or exporters placing their wagons for ferrying their goods on a contract with TRC, which joins the wagons to regular use engines, but that is impracticable with passenger freight. Here the contractual mode has to be different, to work.

It is possible that a formula be worked out by the regulator what an importer of an engine would be paid for its use, a sort of capacity charge so not as to depend on TRC profits as that wouldn’t work. The same can be said of wagons, with the proviso that the importer may also field staff to ensure that the ticketing is properly done and the cash is transmitted in like manner as with commuter buses. Then things could work, since a shareholding formula for importation of engines and wagons shall fail as it failed earlier. In other words rails can be like roads, which no corporation owes but for closer coordination in operations.