The monorail is now standing at ‘NAPA’ station |10 July 2018
People stopped me on the street last week and asked me where is the monorail? Apparently questions were asked in the National Assembly as to what happened to the monorail project as part of the debate relating to the unacceptable congestion on the roads leading in and out and within Victoria. It took me 17 minutes to travel from the clock tower to Independence House, a journey which would normally take less than 2 minutes.
Victoria has become a deadlock city and the new layout of one-way system, small turnings here and there and speed bumps has reduced the free flow of traffic to an unacceptable level. Where is the by-pass? We need a new team with fresh thinking in our Transport Department. There is still a perception that the government knows best what is good for us and the public is not being consulted as it was during the autocratic period of 1977 to 2015.
Market research and feasibility study
A comprehensive market survey was carried out in 2009 in and around Victoria to ascertain first of all whether people thought that a monorail was a good idea and would they use it if the fares were reasonable and what price did they expect to pay, bearing in mind SPTC charged R5.00 travel any distance at the time while the monorail fares would be R10 to R15 between Anse Etoile and Airport. The results of our market survey were very positive and we captured the opinions of drivers who drove into Victoria every day and the opinions of people who travelled by SPTC bus services. We did our best to explain that we would work collaboratively with SPTC and not be a competitor but this idea was alien to the government at the time.
A Feasibility Study by The Academy of High Performance was carried out to ascertain what impact the monorail would have on the environment while we had some colleagues visiting Seychelles who had been involved in similar studies and we enlisted the help of some overseas consultants free of charge on the understanding they would be engaged to carry out the full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) when funding materialised. The Feasibility Study showed that all services were centred in Victoria and that the monorail was not going to be a tourist attraction. All ridership calculations were based on getting people to work and back home.
The Business Plan showed the monorail was a viable business if it did not depend on fares revenue alone to give our investors a return on their investment, we needed other income streams. We incorporated a new company called Anse Royale Express Limited while at the same time we were introduced to a group of Chinese investors who had US $48 million to invest in such a project.
Combined rail and bus station at Victoria
The Chinese investors had been booked into a hotel to come and visit the station sites and local investors were also interested in this venture, we needed to raise US $65 million. We negotiated with the government via MLUH for Station Sites and we were allocated a station site at Ile Aurore which would also serve Anse Etoile conurbation and the North, a station site on Perseverance, and in Victoria we negotiated a site where the new controversial music stadium is being built.
Then out of the blue the government gave this site to the musicians because an election was looming and they did not want the musicians to write and record anti Parti Lepep songs and we were shown an alternative area behind the new music stadium where we would have to landfill the marsh to make room for the Victoria station and it was too far from the Bus Terminal. The minister responsible for infrastructure in MLUH at the time refused to listen to reason that the best option was to combine the Bus Station with the monorail station with the buses running at ground level and the Monorail on the first floor. A further two floors would be added and rented to subsidise the fares. For some reason this idea did not satisfy the minister and his team may be because they had other plans in mind.
Other stations
A site in Roche Caiman to serve that conurbation and Mont Fleuri and the stadium was agreed, a site in Providence was agreed and meetings with SCAA produced a site at the Airport for the Airport Station to serve the old and the new terminals thus completing Phase 1 of the project. Phase 2 would come later running from Airport to Anse Aux Pins then on to Anse Royale. Suddenly a team of consultants from Abu Dhabi arrived in Seychelles and a fancy animation video was prepared and it showed how a new traffic plan would get rid of the traffic congestion in Victoria with no mention of the monorail.
Finally I met with these Consultants who were very disappointed that they had not been briefed about the monorail. At the same time a new MoU was being signed for the Arabs to take over our airport on the pretence that they were bidding to enlarge the airport which was a gross and blatant misrepresentation by the government because you do not sign an MoU for this purpose.
The delay in the finalisation of the Victoria Hub caused the investors to take their money to Namibia.
Would a monorail be profitable?
Some decision makers in our Transport Department could not understand that all railways around the world do not make money on fares, other income streams subsidise the fares. In addition they wanted the monorail to run at ground level and we explained that was not safe and would entail too many road crossings but running at 4 metres above the ground would be safer, required less footprint and no barriers opening and closing when we already have a road congestion problem in Victoria.
The other considerations our government fails to entertain are sea level rise and tsunamis “when” not “if” they occur, the monorail will be the only evacuation system because it will be independently powered by its own generators running at 4 metres above the ground. PUC power stations are at sea level, all our food stock, our banks, our water system are all at sea level and now PUC wants to install our solar farm on Ile Romainville at sea level.
Furthermore we presented to everyone interested including Cabinet that in addition to renting offices above the stations, advertising revenue would be considerable because advertising space would be sold on the station platforms, the entrance to the stations, on billboards along the railway line and in the train carriages. This is a small gold mine if you are good at marketing. Additional services like postal and courier packages and small freight from Airport to Victoria would add to the income stream. All this fell on deaf ears because the government had other ideas…..
Single beam theme park monorail with environmental benefits
The monorail was not designed for speed, it was designed to let the train take the strain from our congested roads. Speed cannot be achieved because the distances between stations are too short and as soon as the train takes up speed it is time to slow down for the next station. When you consider how much fuel we waste queueing up every morning to get to work and queueing up to get out of Victoria and get home to our family you begin to see the huge benefits of the monorail, yet the government failed to react, why?
The level of pollution that the vehicles create every morning and every evening is sufficient to choke the fish stock in our ocean. There is now proof that oil pollutants in the air which contain mercury find their way into our ocean when it rains and fish accumulates this mercury which is passed to humans when the fish is eaten. There is also an increase in respiratory diseases among the young people in Seychelles today who do not smoke but they inhale the carbon monoxide from the vehicles on the way to school.
Monorail should complement the two tunnels
I cannot believe that 2 tunnels will be built when the government has failed to give the monorail its due considerations. First of all the tunnels project has not been discussed with civil society, no consultations have been undertaken, no market research, no figures published relating to the cost, break even period, method of funding, we are just told we are going to have 2 tunnels. I keep wondering whether we live in a democratic society or not because such a project takes years to plan and requires the participation of the civil society. The first thing that the 2 tunnels will do is bring more traffic much quicker to the already clogged up roads leading into Victoria. The second consideration is the likely damage to our fresh water supply in the mountain at a time when water is becoming scarce. Hope we build our second reservoir before we build the tunnels.
Come on let’s get real and let us get our priorities right. Now if you take the monorail into the tunnels then the train will reduce the congestion and improve on the pollution. Does that not make more sense? Think about it, I have and this is my report, where is yours?
Contributed by:
Barry Laine FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH
Anse Royale Express Ltd
The Wishing Well, Anse Des Genets
Mahe, Seychelles
Email: barrylaine@hpcgroup.sc
Disclaimer:
The statements made and the views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.