Abstract
Madagascar invests large amounts of money in road infrastructure, parallel to investments in railway infrastructure and rail subsidies. However, there seems to be no economic justification for investing in two land transport infrastructures in parallel. The amount of state funds channeled into these projects is as expected limited, resulting in deficit funding for both rail and road infrastructure. This results in poor infrastructure and an inferior transportation system. The chapter posits that Madagascar should invest singularly in a land transportation infrastructure; as the well-known proverb advises, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
TopIntroduction
Isolated, small countries do not have beneficial motives for the construction of dual land transportation infrastructure - roads and railways. A mainland country, even a very small country can have a railway system aiming at connecting the small country to its adjacent countries like Monaco which is a tiny country of only 2.2 km2; however, Monaco railway system aims to connect Monaco mainly to France, but also to other countries in Europe. The railways passing through Monaco are operated by the French National Railways (SNCF) (Kshetri, 2020).
Railways on islands adjacent to a populated mainland also exist like Long Island near New York, United States (Hacker, 2000), Sicily near Italy in Europe (Barbarossa & Pappalardo, 2021), and Hainan near China in Asia (Li et al., 2018). The distances of these adjacent islands from the mainland are listed in Table 1. Madagascar is much further than these islands and therefore cannot be deemed a portion of the mainland.
Adjacent islands usually make use of bridges (Bergman, 2018), tunnels (Lerner & So, 2017), or ferries (Wilmsmeier et al., 2020) to connect the railways to the mainland, so adjacent islands can be deemed undivided portions of their adjacent mainland. Madagascar however is a long way away from Africa, so no bridge, tunnel or ferry is available and there is no intention to construct one, nor is there an achievable plan for that.
Table 1. Distance from selected islands to the mainland
| Island name | Distance from the mainland (km) | Connected by a rail or a road to a mainland |
| Long Island | 0.3 | Yes |
| Sicily | 3 | Yes |
| Hainan | 20 | Yes |
| Madagascar | 420 | No |
When choosing which transportation infrastructure (railways or roads) is the most suitable for islands, the designers should consider how often a need for transporting a large number of people occurs and which transportation means will emerge in the next generation. The need of transporting a large number of people is less likely on islands and autonomous vehicles will probably emerge all over the world in the coming decades, so when looking forward, transportation designers of islands usually choose roads. The transportation designers of Madagascar should follow the transportation designers of other islands who realize that single transportation infrastructure is as much as necessary for islands and the more suitable transportation infrastructure for islands is roads as will be explained in the rest of this chapter.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Developed Country: A country that provides high quality of life to its residents because of advanced technological infrastructures and good management of natural resources and manpower.
Vehicle Platoon: A line of autonomous vehicles that go even at high speeds in very short proximity, where each vehicle matches its speed and direction to the vehicle ahead.
Toll Road: A road for which a fee is collected for travelling permission.
Subsidy: Money or benefits given to a company or an institution by the government when the government believes the services given by this company are of advantage for most of the public.
Underdeveloped Country: A country that underexploited its natural resources and manpower resulting in long-lasting mass poverty.
World Bank: An international monetary organization located in Washington, D. C., the USA that offers loans and grants mainly to governments of underdeveloped countries intending to carry out capital projects.
GDP: Gross domestic product (GDP) is the financial value of all the merchandise and services produced within a specific country in one year.
Autonomous Vehicle: A vehicle that can go safely with no human supervision.