Expanding Trade Routes: Re-visiting Highspeed Rail

Today, there has been a resurgence in cross-country as well as transcontinental railway endeavors as some countries focus on highspeed rail as a way to increase commerce. One of the more popular endeavors is the Europe-Asia route which some people refer to as the Silk Road route between Frankfurt, Germany and Shanghai, China.

Some refer to having this type of infrastructure as a competitive advantage but at this point, it would seem to be more a competitive necessity for efficient global trade and competing within the global marketplace.

Throughout the ages, civilizations have always sought new ways to expand trade and commerce. From the Phoenicians looking at sending their merchandise to other cities in the Mediterranean Sea and the Romans building bridges and roads to distant cities, to the United States building the transcontinental railroad in the second half of the nineteenth century, building infrastructure has always been about creating a better trade route to increase commerce. Infrastructure is the platform for global commerce in the 21st century.

NEW AFRICAN RAILWAY INITIATIVES

In Africa alone, there are several new railway initiatives in various stages of planning and development. These projects include:

- The railway project for Oman

- A 185km railway in Algeria

- A $3 Billion metro rail project in Iraq

- The Moroccan Casablanca Tramway in Morocco as well as a high-speed railway system connecting Tangiers and Casablanca

- An urban rail system in Nigeria

- The first phase of the South African Gautrain Rapid Rail in the Gauteng Province

- A light rail project in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, UAE

All of these initiatives should enhance each of these countries’ ability to facilitate global commerce. These types of projects not only create jobs for today, but they also leave a residual value to the whole economy by initiating a new trade route capability.

A multi-disciplinary vision and approach when adding infrastructure to a region will bear a greater return on any money invested in improving the infrastructure. Taking a single-layer approach that was used fifty years ago will provide some return, but not as much as one which takes into consideration that every layer of infrastructure is interrelated.

NEW RAILROADS, NEW COMMERCE

To be able to cut-down the amount of time for the delivery of goods would be a significant boost to any economy. The better the platform for commerce (infrastructure), the better the chance for economic development to accelerate and grow.

Routes have to be selected carefully so that the delivery of goods and services are maximized. Spending money to build a freight route that will not be heavily used is like building the “Railroad to Nowhere”. It might be a good tribute to a politician for his or her ability to get funding, but it may not help economic development or increasing global commerce for the region.

This holds true not only for the traditional layers that are always talked about like roads, bridges and railways, but also those layers that some do not even include in their narrow definition of infrastructure. Network infrastructure and power grids have to be included in any discussion about infrastructure or the way infrastructure is funded.

When building a railroad, there needs to be a more integrated approach to planning, designing and adding it onto the infrastructure. The traditional single function approach (“Let’s build a railroad”) has to be augmented to include the addition of other infrastructure concerns like adding fiber optics along the roadbed while it is being built.

Something as simple as reviewing the incremental cost of adding conduits and fiber optics to roadbeds, rail rights-of-way or even bridges as they are getting built, could boost the viability of a project as well as its overall payback to the region.

The incremental cost to add conduits and fiber optic cable, while the ground is being excavated for a highway or a railway route, is well-spent. This provides even a greater payback and residual value to the region the railway is being built for.

Those that are looking at developing a stronger infrastructure to support their global commerce must look at a boarder picture than their predecessors. This holds true for any country.

Every investment should include a cost/benefits analysis of how other layers could be included in the project for a maximum return on investment.

* CARLINI-ISM: Competitive advantages sometimes quickly turn into competitive necessities as everyone sees the benefits of an established layer of infrastructure and starts to adopt the same strategy.

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