Is it mission impossible?

Bangladesh is really a large city, and raill-based mass transport will be a necessity. But how should the railway develop its role when it has lost almost all its traffic to road?

David Burns is a railway industrial engineering consultant with 40 years of experience in promoting the development of railways all over the world. He is also a frequent contributor to Railway Gazette International.

Bangladesh is a small, poor, densely-populated country. The population is 152 million, and could reach 250 million by 2050. The railway comprises two remnants of the colonial rail network for the most part unchanged since the British left 60 years ago. Bangladesh Railways is a shadow of its former self, with just 4% market shares for both passenger and freight. The country is essentially a large city, and needs effective mass transport, but the railway must overcome major obstacles if it is to be an active service provider in the future.

A good road system is critical to the initial development of a country, and various aid agencies have helped to create a network of roads in Bangladesh. Today, in about 90% of the rural areas, the average distance to a road is only 5 km. The private bus industry has taken advantage of this, and now accounts for 88% of all passenger-km travelled.

On the country's primary route between Dhaka and Chittagong there are five trains and about 1 500 buses each way per day. The bus and truck com­panies have very powerful lobbying associations. So, there is almost insurmountable competition for the railway.

The rapidly-expanding metropolitan Dhaka area is about half the size of ?Tokyo, which is served by 73 commuter and metro lines. Dhaka has just two under-utilised railways. Given the forecast growth in personal income, by 2025 there could be 24 million cars in Bangladesh and four times that number by 2050.

The country has almost no minerals (ballast is imported from India) and a limited manufacturing industry. Its 5 000 garment factories are not oriented for rail freight. The country does not have long distances or much in the way of volume transport - the usual basis for successful rail freight operations. So, emphasis has been on the lorry. The country's primary resource is people. It will be the low-cost manufacturing centre of the future, and it could even become the low-cost labour source for India.

BR management has been living in almost total isolation (a subscription to Railway Gazette International costs the monthly salary of a senior manager) and suffers from archaic civil service recruitment and promotion rules - it takes two years to hire an engineer. Salaries are so low that the primary emphasis is on survival until mandatory retirement at 57.

Technical problems are numerous, and some are unique. For example many routes have to be built on embankments as high as 10 m because of annual flooding of the adjacent rice paddy fields.

Bilateral and mul­ti­lateral aid agen­cies have pro­vided funds, and an unending stream of consultants has tried to promote reform and development of the railways. Indeed, the railway offices contain literally piles of reports that may have been looked at, but the recommendations they contain have seldom, if ever, been implemented.

The future for rail freight is clearly international trade with India, but BR's share of the revenue will be small because of the short distance within the country. Bangladesh is surrounded by India, so transit traffic is a prime opportunity. This could double BR's current revenue and support development, but it took 43 years to restart the international passenger service (p274).

To avoid paving over the country for more roads, the railway needs to aim for a 30% share of the passenger market; this could be unachievable without ?major restrictions on road usage. It should be noted that the French and German railways have, nationally, about a 9% passenger market share even with, until recently, a ban on inter-city buses.

The transport problems of Bangladesh can clearly be predicted - it's only a matter of timing. The solution is not incremental investment to solve short-term problems, but a comprehensive, forward-thinking master plan. This also requires the development of a railway organisation that has the training and incentives to move ahead - not more foreign consultants writing yet more reports.

Resurrecting BR so that it can play a major role in the country's future may seem like mission impossible, given the entrenched bus industry and the short freight distances, but it could be a ?massive and meaningful challenge.

'The solution is not incremental investment to solve short-term problems, but a comprehensive, forward-thinking master plan'