By Michael Makabenta Alunan / Special to the BusinessMirror
Conclusion
History has shown that it is transportation—whether it is ships, trains, buses, or whatever—that literally and figuratively moves a nation to progress, although it has ironically also been the source of conflicts and war. So, let’s take a historical tour and witness how transportation transforms society and the economy, and draw lessons on their relevance today as we push to move the country forward.
■ Role of ports and forts. In the colonial period, it was ships that discovered the New World and new territories that led to trade, like the Galleon Trade, specialization and later industrialization.
However, it was also the same ships, turned into gunboats, that destroyed civilizations (i.e., Aztecs, Mayan, Chinese empire, etc.). The British even created buccaneers and pirates, like Sir Francis Drake. As colonialism was anchored on an extractive relationship with the colonies, and not investing for local growth, the colonizers fought for territories, which was how the game was played.
Thus, forts to protect ports, also from uprising natives, were built. Ports were central to colonial trade, and created a whole new culture. Thus, the word “opportunity” was derived from the word “port,” and scores of other derivatives emerged, like support, report, export, import, rapport, deport, etc.
■ Trains bring war, benefits. But when US President Abraham Lincoln built the 3,000-kilometer railway from East Coast to West Coast, cutting travel time from six months to six days, it angered the British Empire, whose port-based maritime trade was threatened.
It did not forget losing to the 1776 American revolution, and, thus, incited the South, triggering the most stupid Civil War that cost over 600,000 American lives from 1861 to 1865. Southerners were made to believe they were threatened, and that they were different. On the contrary, Southerners were the same as the rest, as every American was distinct from each other, being all migrants, as Irish settlers, Italians, Germans, Jews, etc.
This did not stop Lincoln from building railways, even planning one for the South, despite irritations from bandits like the Jesse James brothers, who were romanticized as Southern heroes, but were actually antidevelopment for robbing trains and banks. He showed leadership par excellence. Imagine, the paradox of straddling the divide of waging a war, while uniting America toward industrialization and railways, which were ironically the same issues that triggered the war.
Free-market philosophy would tell him why build in frontier lands when there was no market yet. For Lincoln, building for the future was the right thing to do. On the contrary, the market followed, as cities sprouted along the way. He also disarmed the South with his anti-slavery propaganda, but most Americans then were not really serious about race issues, being preoccupied with ethnocentricity and survival. It took over 100 years after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 when America woke up to race concerns.
■ Rise of cars and decline of trains. The entry of automobiles introduced a new lifestyle matching the emerging culture of individualism. A car meant freedom, convenience, power, privacy, Freudian sexual symbolism and many other feelings. This triggered a surge in demand that provided markets for oil firms. But railways were efficient, because they could carry massive loads and, thus, posed a threat to the car industry. However, the car industry tightened its alliance with oil producers.
On the supply side, it develop new products, like buses for volume commuters and trucks to move huge cargo door-to-door, which railways could not offer.
■ “Wheels of fortune” shifting. On the marketing side, they influenced policies and adopt what we may call their Detroit model of development of building more roads to sell more cars, thus effectively railroading railway plans. Locally, it’s the Toyota model of development, which meant more foreign loans for road building that paved markets for Toyota, etc., but none for Philippine National Railway railway, which was built as early as 1887, a decade before the 1896
Katipunan revolution.
Meanwhile, railways are increasingly becoming inefficient and dependent on yearly subsidies. Germany spends €17 billion a year; Switzerland, €4.3 billion; France, €13.2 billion; China, $130 billion; Italy, €7.2 billion; Spain, €5.1 billion; the United Kingdom, € 4.5 billion; Japan Cumulative, $300 billion; and the Philippines, P21 billion.
Railways are costly because of their complex systems of rail tracks, matching train coaches and power systems. This makes Francis R. Yuseco Jr.’s Intel-Track a better alternative, as it can operate like a train, minus the rail tracks, coaches and power systems. And it only costs a fraction, or 2 percent of railway costs.
■ “Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way.” President Duterte is known for his willpower, while Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo for her heart for the poor. Both seem to have the best combination of not only alleviating, but eradicating, poverty. But they need a vehicle or a milestone program. Literally, Yuseco’s rapid bus transit provides the “wheel power” and the blueprint of building agro-industrial zones, farm estates and townships that can mushroom along the trackways nationwide. This is similar to Lincoln’s railway, which is also how the West was won.
As the road tracks can also carry big reefer vans and cargo trucks, marginalized farmers and fisherfolk, organized into cooperatives, can now have easier access to markets. As they produce more, earn more and cut off middlemen, consumers benefit with lower food prices, which also help reduce poverty.
Informal settlers along rail tracks can undergo skills training for productive ventures and be mobilized to help in the mini-economic zones, farm estates and townships. They can be taught carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical skills, etc., similar to what President Franklin Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Roosevelt created 4 million jobs in over a month’s time, says Nick Taylor in his book When FDR Put the Nation to Work. After they were taught skills, they were tasked to build roads, bridges, schools, water systems, farm silos, etc.
■ Productivity, creativity to mushroom. We can expect a mushrooming of productivity and creativity not only in agriculture industry, but also in services. Agri- and eco-tourist attractions can also be built near the trackways. All of this development will help reverse rural-to-urban migration and decongest the cities.
Smuggling and tax evasion can also be regulated with Intel-Track’s smart computer system designed by former University of the Philippines cum laude and Prof. Hilary de Leon, chairman of Micrologics Systems Inc., which pioneered the wireless toll and fare collection, telemetry and the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system in the Philippines.
It can service airports and seaports, and can track the rolling stocks, their contents, the specific merchandizes and quantity, and exact time loaded and unloaded. Tariff and customs duties can be monitored correctly, thus income taxes can be tracked accurately. Other gadgetry, from closed circuit television, Wi-Fis, etc., can also be installed.
By learning from great leaders like Lincoln and Roosevelt, all it takes now is the willpower to realize that it is this wheel power that’s worth investing that can move the economy forward.
For comments and feedback, e-mail author via mikealunan@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz/CC BY-SA 4.0, Nonie Reyes