Writing Feedback / Worty Cost? - New railway lines for high speed trains or improving existing public transport [4]

Topic: in a number of countries, some people think it is necessary to spend large sums of money on constructing new railway lines for very fast trains between cities. Others believe the money should be spent on improving existing public transport.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

money for rail systems or public transport?

The question of which infrastructure projects to need spending money on is difficult for governments to solve. While others support building new railways for high speed trains, I would concur with the idea of upgrading existing public transit systems.

The main reason for this is to encourage more people to use it, thereby reducing environmental pollution which is caused by private vehicles. It is obvious that public transit systems which have been built and operated for a long time will be deteriorated if they are not upgraded and fixed on a regular basis, making people find it unsafe and insecure to use. As a consequence, this can decrease the number of users and increase the number of private vehicles on the roads at the same time and therefore give rise to many terrible problems such as traffic congestion and air pollution. Nevertheless, if money is allocated on improving public transport, these aforementioned problems would be addressed.

Of course, advocates for spending money building new railroads for express trains between cities may argue that it can relieve population pressures on metropolises and then also indirectly minimize environmental problems. They say, with some merit, that high speed trains can save users much time for travel between cities, meaning those who work far from their homes do not need to stay in there, but they can go homes quickly. This not only enables them to save money for accommodation but also prevent these large cities from the increase in population due to the migration of people from smaller cities and rural areas to work, and thanks to this, serious issues such as roads congestion and air contamination would be tackled considerably as well.

Although doing this to some extent, the cost involved in constructing the high speed rail systems is uneconomical. In order to do this, governments have to invest large nation budget in buying a massive number of new building materials and paying for construction companies, not to mention long construction time. Meanwhile, upgrading and enhancing public transport which have existed would cost less and be easier to implement.