Free Web Hosting Provider - Web Hosting - E-commerce - High Speed Internet - Free Web Page
Search the Web

Rosario Rail Enthusiasts Association have prepared and send it to the competent authorities this work that contains all the basic ideas of the Institution related with this subject, and now we present to your consideration in hope to bring a better future to our Region, so that we think that all we express in it is fully valid in this time of far-reaching decisions.

This work tries of clarifying it more unaffectedly possible, the urgent need of a deep change to end with the causes of the catastrophic state of the land freight and passenger transportation in the zone.  Without need of accomplishing the vast review of the facts that signed the luck, or to be more exact the misfortune of several generations, we will state the measures to concretize to amend the calamitous road that we travel currently.

For the purpose of quantify this misfortune -only in the economic aspect and in approximate form- enough to mention the publisheded figures in the press of the value of damages caused by the accidents in the routes of the Santa Fe Province among January and August 2000, that ascend to more than U$S 54 million.  Would not be just to refer to the hundreds fatal victims, the smaller and greater lesions, the losses in vital time of the population, the diseases of collateral or direct relationship, and the very great damages to the environment, reducing them to mere numbers or monetary securities since involve direct assaults to the human dignity.
 

For this, is worth the trouble be asked:  What short term reality shoulds wait and demand the Citizens of an Integral Transportation System so that accompany the Sustainable Development of the Region?

To our understanding, basically, the next:

1- Developement of long scope and not exclusively of conjuncture politics, as well as local technologies that offer solutions "to measure" for the Region, inspirational in the local experience, as well as in the very spreaded available at international level;  and the definition of a sustainable TRANSPORTATION POLICY, the one which we lack.

2- There must be avoided “magic solutions” among these exotic monorails, mastodon-like articulated buses,  "Micro-differential transportation" , etc.,  that carry us to the chaos spending our own money or indebting us and committing even more the future of the next generations.

3- A total hierarchysation of the system in access, infrastructure, technical means and human resources.  This concept involves the coordinated utilization of ALL transportation manners, without discrimination as the practiced today against the railway and the electrical traction, that they are recognized at world level as the tools of an EFFICIENT land transportation and factors of a real political and technical REVOLUTION.  (To see ANNEX:  FORCE IDEAS)

4- Reduction of the travel times, to better life quality of all the inhabitants, and reduction of the freight costs, to make competitive our economy.

5- Severe reduction of the malicious designed "traffic accidents", by a qualitative improvement of the means and the used procedures.  Beginning actions for a urgent reduction of the quantity of circulating vehicles, in particular the whole they aren´t useful and secure.  (To see ANNEX: TRANSPORTATION, ROAD SAFETY AND PUBLIC HEALTH)

6- Reduction of the gaseous, acoustic and solid particles projected in the air pollution provocated by the automotive transportation.  Direct consequence of the energy saving, the decrease of the use of not renewable resources and consumption optimization.  (To see ANNEX:  RATIONAL USE OF THE ENERGY)

7- Better soil employment to their use in efficient transportation means.  In particular to end with the compulsory liquidation and transfer of real estate of the former Argentine Railways company, public lands that they are the geographical, strategic and economic key for any project to future, and that today they are being embezzling in uses named as banal that they do not provide nothing to the COMMON GOOD.  Without counting the irresponsible uses that is them given in other cases, putting in danger in collapse existing infrastructure in large value, much in she yet unpaid on the context in the national external debt.

Here it should be to emphasize that to use the real estate goods administered by the ONABE (former ENABIEF) selects by a Project of Bill, as guarantee of the works of the "National Infrastructure Plan" is a very dangerous act -perhaps incorrigible of be carried to practice-.  For him, they are exposed properties very coveted for real-estate "businesses" and vital for a national railway system serious and integrative, to guarantee payments that is known beforehand it is impossible to accomplish.  Paradoxically they are road works in their immense majority, with something which is continued subsidizing and incentivating to the more inefficient, offensive and pollutant of transportation manners;  to coast of prejudicing in a irreparable way to which must potentiate to correct problems –originated precisely by the benefitted-

In the two annex plans -made by the Santa Fe Cadastral Service of Territorial Information, the most updated possible-, it can be appreciated clearly that they do not exist localities of the Province where lack useful railway facilities, as well as the plot in the form of net that facilitates -in a reasonable operative state and without great investments-, the conectiveness among all the localities, for freight as well as for passengers.

8- Reduction of the expenses in repairing and conservation of the public road permanently shattered by a ineffectual transportation -public and private-, that constitute a real covert subsidy.  Assignment of those resources to works of indispensable routes in where are really needded and in all urbanized areas where subsist ditches with served waters and temporary causeways; and in all the necessary inconclusive railway and public transportation infrastructure.

9- Increase of the utilization of the public transportation induced by the oversupply and quality of the same, as well as of the massive freight transportation by railway accomplishing a balanced modal allotment.

10- Determination of tariffs according to technical criteria;  avoiding political motivations of economic character and no subsidizing to the inefficiency, with benefits -apparent or real- simply sectoral.  Evaluating all the factors of prices training, in a foot of equality and impartiality.

11- Restitution to the operation of railway passengers transportation systems in the metropolitan areas with use of the existing alignments and stations, located as in any place of the world in the heart of the cities and connecting them directly to all the intercity and suburban areas.  For this will be necessary a policies coordination, operations, investments and interest with the current freight concessionary, that deforce most of the necessary tracks, as well as with the municipalities that plan or execute uses opposed in necessary real estate.  (To see ANNEX:  LEGAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS)

This is particularly remarkable, but not exclusive, of the Metropolitan Area of Great Rosario, where the quantity of quarters besides of the tracks would supply abundant passengers to justify to begin how much before the operative local of a North-South service (on the metric tracks) combined, in a principle through transfer, to other Center-West (on the broad gauge tracks), to be offered by two-way Diesel or Diesel-electrical light railcars.  Similar vehicles are used with success in many countries, among them Spain.  Some secondhand originating from that country, currently make it in the Metropolitan of Resistencia (Chaco) or in intercity services in that Province lent by SEFECHA / Servicios Ferroviarios Chaqueños, that penetrate in Santa Fe territory from the North until the locality of Los Amores, being able to in short to arrive to the city of Vera.  Reinforce this affirmation in the case of Rosario, that it was recommended the relaunchment of those services in the consultancy report requested by the Municipality in 1998 to the Consulting SYSTRA-ATEC proposing the use of electrical trains, something which implies -by the moment- a very high investment and a very deep change.

12- In the case with the bulks load, to make extensive and intense use of the existing facilities in stations (silos, discharge facilities for arids, liquids, etc.).  The same as the immediate utilization of the numerous existing multimodal facilities (railway - road - river / maritime) that easily surpass current demand and they are passible to adapt to international standards with scarce investment and intense use of labor, to palliate the unemployment and to generate progress for a near future.

13- Development of sources of stable work and qualified labor, to build, man, maintain and improve private and public transportation.  Being the Santa Fe Province owning of the few kernels of national railway repair and material manufacture with almost ten shops -in production or prepared for this-, whose potential is accurate to use by constituting a huge quantitative and qualitative advantage on other provinces.

14- All change effort must be accompanied with diffusion campaigns on the thematic, that generate takes an of conscience on the part of the citizens for the utilization and defense of a system that it must benefit us to ALL.  It is vital that this is begun with the children so that the respect to Common Good is incorporated from the training of the citizen.
 
 

Railway facilities as those which today exist in our Province, they are usable for multiple ends, as was made from their installation.  For this should count on the international standard of quality, the signaling system and an adequate control.  In them can operate simultaneously:  local, suburban and of long distance passenger services, with freight and yet other special services -as for example those of maintenance-.  Don´t make it, it´s underuse their capacity.
The charges distribution in the interior of the cities is possible by railway to truck transfer, or to collection / elaboration plant.
Metropolitan trains, light rail and trolleybuses they are considered by some local academics as transportation manners for a distant future, that would make its irruption among us when our cities will be overpopulated Metropolitan Areas, overcontaminated and heaped.  These were until makes some years OUR means of transportation;  their evolution among us was cut, when more WERE NEEDING it by those which were pontificating (and continue making it) than the cities had to be developed to car scale and not to human scale.  Such argument is so wrong that is rebuted with alone with throwing a look to the world: a trip, conferences to the educational establishments today is taught transportation in developed countries or not so much, or unaffectedly from the specialized press, Internet or other means of communication.

Now, as so many the countries of the world that fell in that trap should return to the roots to return to go.  That yes, paying a high cost, in lives and goods, for have permitted to destroy our patrimony and quality of life.  A cost that grows how much more is delayed takes it of transcendent decisions.
 
 

• A legal - institutional framework of adequate territorial planning, that give form to the necessary regulation.
• An infrastructural equipment that satisfy cultural and socioeconomic functional demands.
• A due election of a intermodal system that solves with efficiency and operativeness what is referring to the movements, exchanges and communications.
• A clear conectiveness and accessibility of the different points of the territory and quality of the environment.
• Will be necessary to opt for an applicable INTERMODAL PLAN to:
• Freight transportation:  Objectives:  to make use of each manner in rational form, to solve the connections among port terminals, airport, transfer areas, productive areas, urban centers etc.  Facilitating with clarity the flows toward the corridors and terminal of export or consumption.
• Persons Transportation:  Has as objective to priorize public service systems on the private, optimizeing the current situation of the population, generating efficient and sure systems.  Being KEYS:  Good collection and control, greater confort, equipment, frequency, and good maintenance.
• The Plan must be sustainable in time, preserving the life quality of the population, avoiding traffic jams with low pollution records, reduction in the energetic consumption and traffic safety.
• Demythification of the rail transportation as separator of the cities, and revaluation as valuable heir patrimony, as social equity tool to the light of the current experience and of the international and local precedents.  (Santa Fe province:  133.007 km2 with 5.000+ track Km in broad and metric gauge, with almost 500 facilities -stations, sidings, shops, etc.-)
• Benefits not registered by the conventional countable procedures, that derive from a good transportation system for the society, from difficult economic quantification.  For example:  a revaluation of the real-estate, served by an effective transportation system.  These benefits even though result from the good operation of the system, they do not appears in no countable state, and less yet in those of the administratix entity of the same.  They are political managing elements and they should be carefully computed in a luck of  "social accounting", not foreign to the economic balance in the one which participate the State in for of the transportation, and in fact, of the community.

 

In terms of the Ecology is essential to improve the efficiency of the transportation system, or rather, to save energy.  For example, in the existing plot to join two points a city is gone through the heart of the same, determining there congestion and unnecessary pollution.  The movements can be achieved with greater energetic efficiency optimizeing routes and using electrical traction, since the specific consumption of electrical vehicles is very lesser of the units with equivalent internal combustion engine in capacity, without any possibility these last of energy recovery by braking.  Other very important concept is that of to disentail urban transportation of an only energetic source, which is today the Diesel fuel.  Being electricity an intermediary manner, this would permit to trigger transportation with energy of any primary origin, renewable or not.  Firstly, electrical traction contaminates less, and it can be integrated of not prejudicial way to the urban landscape by its calm and comfortable operation.

On November 22 1985 was sanctioned by the National Executive Branch the Decree 2247/85 of Conservation and Rational Use of Energy, the one which devotes a chapter to the substitution of fossil fuels by electricity in transportation.  In Rosario were accomplished studies related to the application of this norm of the National Government, and were certified professional groups to understand in the topic.  As indirect fruit of these, it can be taken the recovery of the trolleybus Route "K".  Thereinafter, they were abandoned practically all the studies on those which had been advanced.
 
 

A technical and socially inefficient transportation increases unnecessarily trip times, vital time that it is removed to the passengers from any activity in the one which wanted to use it;  or in the case of the goods unnecessary expenses in freight that cause cost increases.   Such situations encourage the use of particular cars, taxis, "door to door" minibus services among the richest and that of bicycles and motorcycles among the less-resourced citizens.  To this is added that it has been arrived to astounding extremes in the presence of blood-traction carts and loose animals, used by the social excluded, within same road traffic system.  Mixed with a trucks park of the most assorted nature, that frequently transgress all technical-operative norm.  This situation has carried to bottlenecks in central zones, other cause of lengthening of trip times; it has incorporated a perilously heterogeneous and overpopulated vehicular park;  it has increased alarmingly the number of violence and extreme gravity accidents in the roads.

Example 1: Among the 1930s and 1970s, be displaced from Fisherton, western urbanized extreme of Rosario, until Rosario Central station, scarce blocks of the full downtown area, did count to a traveler a mere 14-22 minutes train trip.  The same tour today, insumes among 45 and 60 minutes in a bus trip that is a far to be merry, according to traffic conditions, and if made it in less time would be to risk of his own physical integrity.

Example 2: Seasonal drama of the cereal campaign in the routes and port and oily plants populations.

Considering the legal straddle under the one which still subsist in the province railway facilities, dissafected for the most part of the services but delivered under various grants and / or custody to companies, municipalities and other entities;  it is fundamental that is materialized the support of municipalities and intermediate entities in order to concretizing reforms by the future implicances that will have for the Region.  The Bill #23.696 called "of the Reform of the State", establishes the privatization of railway transportation services, among other.  Within this legal framework the Executive dictated Decree #666/89, whose motives exposition expresses that it is a  "fundamental objective of the Government the increase in the participation of the railway, in the mobilization of the freight and passenger traffic".  Being that the international experience until the present is articulated from regulatory character of the State in the matter, the determination of tax charges, exemptions, subsidies, interest rates, etc. will be related to the conditional situations that needs of promotion or regional subsidy impose to the rates regime.

To Back Index Page...