EDITORIAL
Light Rail System Would Be Problematic For Cayman
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
One does not have to spend hours sifting through reams of data on
development patterns in the Cayman Islands to discern that the once “sleepy
village” of Grand Cayman – if it ever was truly that – is bulging at the
seams. The evidence is, literally, in our faces.
It is there in the long rush-hour traffic lines coming in from West Bay and
Bodden Town; to leave home after 7:30 am these days is to run the serious risk
of not making the 9 am bell. It is there in the now almost impossible task of
finding a parking spot in town after 8:30 am. It is there in the 1000-plus
students criss-crossing the John Gray High School on a campus designed for 700
children, and in the projected full-house enrolments at other schools come
September.
The consequences of too much too quickly (we are generously ignoring the
cruise-ship part of this explosion), predicted by some to bedevil us down the
track, have clearly come to pass ahead of any projected schedule. Worse yet,
the peculiar development pattern of this country, with the majority of the
development taking place on the smallest part of the landmass, means that
traffic congestion, affecting both visitors and residents, is going to pose
major headaches for the government in power after November’s elections.
Given the layout of our present road system, our transportation problems
are especially vexing. In the West Bay peninsula, in particular, land for
widened or additional roads is simply not there, and the notion of a causeway
parallel to the present road would be prohibitively expensive, to say nothing
of the degradation of the North Sound shoreline that would result.
One suggestion is that a light-rail-transit line (LRT) be built along West
Bay Road to move workers quickly to the city and to also complement the
proposed ferry service for visitors disembarking at the soon-to-be-built
cruise ship dock in West Bay and heading south.
To look hard and long is to find very few solutions for the road congestion
and LRT may well have some potential for us, but there are problems, too. LRT
operations in cities in the US have been growing in number in metropolitan
centres over the past several years, but they have a troubling accident
record.
The LRT system in Houston, despite wide awareness campaigns, was hit by
five collisions before it opened on 1 January 2004. Despite more awareness
ads, there were 18 more collisions, between cars and trains, from January to
March. The Dallas system had 17 accidents in 2003. The LRT system built to
move travellers between the JFK and LaGuardia airports suffered an accident on
its opening run and was shut down.
In addition, there are many who predict that the Caymanian motorist, wedded
to his or her vehicle (nobody walks here) will not gravitate towards LRT as
they didn’t gravitate to multi-storey parking lots downtown.
Most importantly, an LRT system’s effectiveness rests on a large population
base for economies of scale (that excludes Cayman) and particularly on an
urban transportation network (buses; streetcars; subways) that disperses
passengers from the LRT terminal to all points of the compass. Cayman has no
such network in the George Town area and environs. Neither does it have any
vacant land in the George Town to accommodate the LRT terminal, nor the
substantial parking area that will be needed if northbound travellers are to
use the rail system.
The development spiral is here, and the very citizens who have been
clamouring for a resurgence in the economy are often the very ones complaining
about long delays on the roads, but as this Government and the one that
follows it looks for answers, the evidence suggests the solutions will prove
to be very difficult and probably painful, as well.
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