by Rod Hughes

President Oscar Arias’s dream of having an inter-urban mass transit electric train running between Alajuela and Cartago, passing through the capital, has been “derailed,” using the apt word employed by La Nacion reporter Vanessa Loaiza in today’s edition. The project was aimed at reducing downtown traffic and conserving fossil fuels.

The Comptroller General’s Office annulled the contract between the government’s concession office and a Brazilian firm charged with running a feasibility study. It appears that when the concession council opened the international bidding for the study, they did not notify all the firms that had shown interest in the project, rendering the contract illegal, according to the Comptroller’s legal beagles.

The mass transit project would have meant a major financial effort on the government’s part. Just the first stage alone, Heredia, Pavas, Curridabat, would have cost $150 million, according to Vice Minister of Concessions Viviana Martin. Yet, if petroleum continues to climb in price, threatening the country’s balance of trade, the sacrifice might be worth it.

Costa Rican’s nationalized railroad fell on evil times in the 1970s, as had other nations” similar networks during the same era, as relatively low fuel prices for trucks and better highways came into play. In 1995, President Jose Figueres (Jr.) closed down the system that had been bleeding red ink for a decade or more, leaving only the banana-carrying system in Limon province still working under private concessionaires.

In 1998, then-President Miguel Angel Rodriguez envisioned cargo and passenger service to the Pacific port of Puntarenas but the only bidder required a strong investment that the government was not willing to make. In 2003, President Abel Pacheco refocused attending on inter-urban passenger service and a French company’s study showed the project to be feasible. In 2005 a feasibility study contract was cancelled due to defects in the writing and the fact that Pacheco’s austerity administration did not want to shell out $1 million.

But Arias was enchanted with the idea and was nervously eying rising petroleum prices. Moreover, traffic glut in the downtown capital and even interurban expressways had been increasing alarmingly since Arias’s first presidency. But the Comptroller’s blocking of the tracks may mean the end of the plan for now; the President is half-way through his four-year term and international bidding for a new study will take him through the end of his time in office.

It appears that only if the next president is interested will the project prosper.