Roads. It’s a word that sends shivers down the spine of every conservationist, ecologist or environmentalist – and for many good reasons. So, let’s make a list – in no particular order of importance. To begin with, building a road into a pristine wilderness means that the wilderness is no longer pristine.

With the road will come people in cars, freight trucks, factories and mines, hotels and condos, parking lots, malls and messes, and the people who come will initially want to live in the wilderness because nobody lived there when the road was first built.

Eventually, there will be so many people living there that those who came first will hate the noise and congestion and will want to build another road to another wilderness where nobody lives, and so on, and so on, and so on, until there isn’t any wilderness left. I think the people living in the vicinity of the ever-expanding Esterley Tibbetts Highway must be feeling this way about now. Wonder where they’ll go next? 

Next comes the habitat destruction caused by the construction of the road itself. Fill that swamp, fell that tree, blast that hillside, pour that concrete, flatten that bump, pour asphalt over the roadbed, put light standards and power pylons alongside the right-of-way. Everything is trashed as the big yellow machines and their payloads roll on.

Then there is the blight that follows the roads. Those machines that we love to hate, driven by what British playwright George Bernard Shaw called the “infernal combustion engine”. That’s why we put the roads there in the first place, so those machines can move faster and the drivers won’t have to sit in long line-ups any more.

The trouble is (ask any traffic engineer, he’ll confirm it) that the more roads you build, the more cars people buy to fill them up. Anyone who’s been to California knows that. And how fast do you really want to go? Fast enough to kill yourself and others, of course. If you build a car that can travel at 100 mph, then you will surely find some fool who will see if he can drive it that fast. The pollution that roads bring is horrendous.

Every vehicle needs fluids of all kinds to function. Engine oil, coolant, brake fluid, transmission fluid, clutch fluid, the list goes on. Every vehicle spills these fluids onto the roads as they pass along them. The fluids build up on the road’s surface until a heavy rainfall comes along and washes these toxic liquids into the areas around the road.

Most freeways in the United States now have areas of wetland built alongside them, where run-off is directed and the pollutants removed by wetland plants. In Cayman those toxic fluids wash into the land at the side of the roads and ultimately find their way into the sea. Next, let’s look briefly at the millions of tons of carbon dioxide that our vehicles emit every hour of every day.

The more roads we build, the more vehicles will be bought to drive on them, and the more emissions we will pump out to help global warming on its merry way. Then there is the financial burden that roads place on our economies. Every year in Cayman we spend millions of dollars building new roads and repairing old ones.

Dollars that could and should be spent on other more important items. I’d love to know what percentage of our annual budget goes on roads. Rather large, I would think, and we merely reflect what is happening throughout the rest of the world.

Take the last budgetary debacle – the continuation of the Esterley Tibbetts Highway to West Bay. According to the Net News and the rest of the stunned media a couple of weeks ago, the LA voted an additional $7.4 million for phase 3 of this highway.

Also receiving the LA’s blessings was $2.57 million to add to the $1 million for gazetted claims of lands acquired for the highway extension. According to a GIS release, a “significant portion of the expense was anticipated for the purchase of a material called ‘geotextile’, used to strengthen marshy areas to enable the construction of the highway over them.

Average delivery of some 3,000 cubic yards of material per day would be racked up over the next couple of weeks.” Gotta fill in that pesky swamp and chop down them mangroves, right? The highway, said the Net News, which links West Bay and Seven Mile Beach to other parts of the island, will now cost $10.4 million – an initial $3 million had already been approved for the works to alleviate traffic congestion between the Hyatt Regency and Indies Suites.

Communications and Works Minister Hon. Arden McLean, with responsibility for roads, told the LA that $10 million would be reallocated from the Ministry of Education to finance the highway extension. Mr. McLean said the reduction in funds would not hurt that ministry but it would be replaced in three years.

Roads or teachers?

Excuse me. Hullo, out there. We are taking $10 million from the education budget? What precisely are we going to cut from education that this money was dedicated to – those new schools we desperately need? Let’s see. Our schools are in trouble. Anyone with kids in school or who monitored the education conference last fall knows this.

Schools are overcrowded. Teachers are quitting in droves. They can’t live on what they are earning now. Many are having to live three or four in a small apartment just to make ends meet. Working conditions are poor. Many of our kids have special needs.

They need additional help at school because they aren’t getting it at home. We’re told there isn’t any money to pay for additional education specialists to help them. Of course there isn’t. We need it to build roads, don’t we? And anyone who has worked in government knows that it is an extremely rare occurrence for money that has been taken out to be out back in again. We’ll see.

Monorail an alternative

So, having castigated roads in no uncertain terms, let’s have a look at an interesting alternative. How about a monorail the length of West Bay Road? It could run up the middle of the existing right-of-way – no need to buy extra land. It could be made attractive and funky, maybe with coloured murals. And think of the tourist appeal!

A speedy zip up to the Turtle Farm or Barkers Park. An amazing view of the Caribbean just across the beach. If you’re commuting, just take your copy of the Net News and sit back in comfort, high above the seething motorists, who will soon be sitting in traffic jams again unless, like Bermuda, we limit the number of cars people are allowed to own.

Monorails operate most successfully over short, fixed distances, and can be found in many different parts of the world. Perhaps Japan has the most, with several cities in that country served by small systems. The Chinese government recently announced the opening of an “elevated light rail line” in the city of Chongqing.

However, it’s important to note that the system referred to does not actually use light rail technology but rather a proprietary monorail system provided by the Japanese firm Hitachi. To reduce construction costs of urban rail transit systems – typically subways – the Chinese government has begun encouraging “light rail” alternatives – i.e., monorails.

According to recent news reports, each monorail train set running on the Chongqing system has four units (“cars”) and can hold about 500 people. The new service attracted nearly 10,000 visitors on its first day of operation. Of course, you wouldn’t get these kinds of numbers here. And we wouldn’t need as many “rail cars”.

But monorails are an extremely efficient system of travelling short distances. Though the early systems tended to be noisy, new technology has all but eliminated this problem. A big advantage is that they don’t take up much land. And if you want to check one out, just drop by Disney World in Orlando and ride their system.

Since 1991, the Walt Disney World Resort has operated a fleet of 12 Mark VI trains on its monorails. Disney says that more than 30 years of research and development, begun in the 1950s, has brought monorail technology to where it is today. The 13.6-mile monorail system carries over 150,000 guests to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot parks on an average day.

The Disney World monorail system has been in continuous operation since 1971 and the current expanded monorail began operation in 1990, with the full fleet of 12 cars in service by early 1991. The Mark VI has a higher passenger capacity as well as improved air conditioning, door systems and safety features.

Each Mark VI train consists of six cars. The overall length is 203 feet with a capacity of 365 passengers. According to the Disney website, the track consists of pre-cast concrete beams, 26 inches wide, supported by concrete columns which about 50 feet apart.

Each monorail travels on rubber tires and is powered by a 600-volt DC propulsion system that includes eight DC motors rated at 112 HP each, with the power emanating from each side of the beam. It wouldn’t be cheap to build, but think of the savings in stress, pollution and habitat destruction.

With the right kind of approach, finding EU or World Bank funding wouldn’t be that hard. It sure beats building more roads.