INTERVIEW |
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In conversation with Rail Professional Asia Pacific over the years… Over the last five years, our editor Sam Sherwood-Hale has spoken to industry experts, decision makers and thought leaders from across the Asia Pacific region, here are some highlights
Dr Taku Fujiyama of University College London China and Japan are competing for bids across Southeast Asia, how do you see the two countries differing in their approach? It depends on how you define success, is it imperative that the project performs
financially in the short term or that it functions for the population as it expands? For example, some contractors have what I call the inkjet printer business model, the initial cost is very cheap but if you want to extend the system or do maintenance the new parts are very expensive, so this might not necessarily be a success depending on what the goal of the project is. If you look around the world there very few rail companies that make a profit from carrying passengers only, they have other revenue streams from property. So, planners need to develop new schemes to make money from the land that they own and monetise the customers that come with the business of transportation. In the UK, the franchise contract tends to be five or seven years whereas an infrastructure owner has to think 20 years down the line in terms of planning. There is this mismatch between owner and operator. The railway is not like a mobile phone where you buy a new one every year, the machinery has to last decades. If country A wants to buy infrastructure from Japan or China, the team has to have the skills to manoeuvre within the negotiations. Making money in the long term requires accepting certain standards. Are smaller cities like Hanoi, Phnom Penh, or even Vientiane, which are more reliant on the motorcycle, going to have an easier time of convincing their populations to switch to public transport?
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This is a city-wide problem, to promote railways you need multiple policies that are outside of rail but encourage its use, Beijing used to be a bicycle dominated city and then the car became king, now there are many lines and more people use them.
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The Government had a car rationing system so depending on your number plate you could only use your car on certain days. We’ve been discussing this in the workshop, access and easiness of the railway (getting there and then getting to where you need to go). Bike parking spaces in Beijing have become much more ubiquitous as there are a lot of bike rental systems around the stations. Rail Professional
