ETHIO- DJIBOUTI RAILWAY SUFFERS FROM THEFT AND VANDALISM,
LEADING TO HEAVY REVENUE LOSS.
 |
Workers building embankments
on the Kenyan SGR |
This headline, in an Ethiopian publication, Addis
Standard of December7th, 2020, dismayed me.
It reported about a meeting held by the Management of
Ethiopia Railways Corporation and local residents of the Amhara Region. The
purpose was to educate the local people on the benefits of the Railway line and
to motivate them to protect it.
The Corporation, said the Managers, had lost 114 million
Ethiopian Birr (US$2.961 million), in the quarter ending September 31, 2020, due
to vandalism and theft of Railway infrastructure. This crime, said the
Managers had forced the train, an electric train, to slow its speed from 80Kph
to 50 Kph thus slowing freight movement between Addis-Ababa and Djibouti port,
by six hours. The 705 MK journey would normally take 12 hours but now extends
to 18 hours.
The Addis-Djibouti Railway line is the first electricity
propelled line in Africa. It cost some US$4 billion to construct. It is a level
crossing line with little elevation. According to the managers of the line,
apart from theft and vandalism of the line’s infrastructure, accidents have
also become a headache for the line. So
far, tens of people and hundreds of livestock have been killed in accidents on
the line. Also, last year, a freight train derailed when it ran into flooded
rails.
To protect their assets, said the managers, the corporation had to construct 60 kilometers of a fence in the notorious spots. However, they explained, the cost of fencing the
entire Railway line is prohibitive. That is why they called this educational
forum to sensitize local people to protect the line. However, this does not
appear to be a solution since the livestock cannot be sensitized not to cross
the line even when trains are approaching. Nor can floods be stopped from
occurring.
The Addis–Djibouti railway line is treated as the benchmark of a cost-efficient railway line in
East Africa. It cost US$4 billion to build 705 kilometers of a Standard Gauge
Railway whose trains are propelled by electricity. This
works to an average of $5.674 million per kilometer including works,
electrification, and hardware- that is locomotives and wagons. In fact, the
cost has been hailed as value for money by politicians and commentators in East
Africa.
However, as the old adage goes, proof of the pudding is in
the eating. Thus it looks like the low price
was not value for money. The Addis-Djibouti line is beset with critical
operational problems that reduce its efficiency and reliability- the core
targets of its development. These are
symptoms of poor decision making in project implementation where key variables
in the success of the project were assumed away. The key variable that apparently was ignored
is the environmental impact assessment. How will the Railway line affect the
environment especially in relation to property and safety of the people
neighboring the line?
The key driver in
the implementation of the line appears to have been cost minimization. Cost minimization is the worst decision diver in any
project implementation decision. Initial cost minimization could lead to
further costs in the future- both financial and economic.
This is the case with the Addis-Djibouti line. The
decision to build a low elevation level crossing line with no bridges was a
fatal blunder for a high- speed railway line. Engineers tell us that in railways and road
projects, bridges raise costs by 30 percent. This is to say that, had the Addis–Djibouti line been elevated even to three meters, the entire project would
have cost six to seven billion dollars.
The much-maligned
Kenyan line is elevated, in some sections up to 43 meters, but generally, the average elevation is three
meters. The elevation was meant to
eliminate accidents along the line- whether collisions with animals, people, or
vehicles. That is why it has no level crossings.
A High-speed train is meant to cut travel time
for freight and passengers and cut incidental costs. It must always run at a
higher speeds-say 80 Kph for freight trainers and 120 Kph for Passenger
trains. The Kenyan SGR achieves these
speeds; the passenger train travels for 4 hours at 120 KPH between Nairobi and
Mombasa while the freight trains take 8 hours at 80Kph. No accidents have been
reported along the line and theft of Railway infrastructure and furniture is
punishable by death in Kenya.
In the Ethiopian case, the goal was to cut travel time
between Djibouti port and Addis Ababa to 12 hours for freight trains and even
less for passenger trains doing 120-160 kph. That appears to be a mirage for now and into
the future. Fencing 60 kilometers of the line has not helped, because
livestock, including camels, break the fence to get to the other side. To reach
these optimal speeds, if at all, the Ethiopian Railways Corporation, will have
to bite the bullet and elevate the line.
In hindsight then, there was wisdom in the construction
of the “expensive” Kenyan line because all these factors were considered and
paid for. Perhaps this is why the
Central Corridor has a number of underpasses which helps keep its elevation low
and costs relatively low.
Experts in the
northern Corridor line, linking Kenya, Uganda, and other landlocked countries in
the region, who have been cast as corrupt, will have the last laugh once the
causes of the problems bedeviling the Ethio-Djibouti line crystalize. Cheap can
be expensive!
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