It’s a lemon

Re: “Study on Land Bridge estate expected soon”, (Business, April 26).

It is hard to imagine a more impractical, money-swallowing project than the government’s scheme for a Land Bridge across the Isthmus of Kra. The previously long-touted idea of a canal was doomed because of the eye-watering cost and logistical challenges of constructing a sea-level canal through the partly mountainous route.

However, just when we thought the project was dead and buried, the idea was resurrected as a Land Bridge by a government desperate to attract foreign investment.

Sorry, PM Srettha, but this new idea does not compute, either.

First, let’s examine its utility. Compare it to the world’s two other major navigational “shortcuts” — the Panama and Suez canals. They are successful because they save about 10-12 days of sailing time, avoid a challenging Cape and save 12-15,000km of fuel consumption.

By contrast, the Chumphon to Ranong Land Bridge would save just 30 hours of sailing and no more than 1,200km of fuel consumption. This is a mere 10% of the savings made by using those financially viable canals.

To make the Kra transit fees economical for shipping companies, the math indicates it would only make sense for them to pay a toll of no more than 10% of the amount paid to use either of the other two canals. How can such low revenue ever begin to cover the interest on the more than trillion baht PM Srettha says he is budgeting to build the doubletrack rail line and totally new container ports at Ranong and Chumpon?

Further, when you consider the fact that full unloading of a 12,000-unit container vessel would take about 2-3 days and a similar amount of time on the other side for reloading, this would cost shippers a total of 4-6 days of vessel delay. This fact alone should be enough to show that the idea of using the Land Bridge will be an impossible “sell” to shipping companies. The only way out of that dilemma would be for Thailand to provide them with huge compensation for the time their vessels lose from Land Bridge usage.

Although this is already evidence enough to shelve the Land Bridge idea, consider also the logistics involved in transporting the 12,000 40-foot containers carried on an average-sized container vessel. Those containers would stretch 480,000ft or 146km, and once loaded onto rail bogies, this expands to about 164km. Note that the rail line would be 130km in length. Double stacking could reduce the train lengths to about 80km. However, that would require extra investment, which would be needed to reinforce the railway track, dig deeper road underpasses, and install huge port cranes. As a side note, the world record length for a container train is 7.2km pulled by the Goliath locomotive in the USA in 2021. The Land Bridge project would need at least 11 of these monsters to haul the cargo of just one container vessel in one direction.

But one vessel paying 10% of what those other “shortcuts” collect won’t pay the bills.

Consider that the Suez and Panama Canals transit about 30 and 15 large container vessels, respectively, each day. Chaos would result if Land Bridge train operators are set a target of hauling several hundred thousand containers by rail each way daily.

So, in summary, the days wasted in port time overwhelm the 30 hours saved in sailing time, and the logistical challenges of moving so many containers back and forth across the country are harrowing to contemplate.

So why take on so much headache just to make huge losses?

Finally, Thailand beware. The idea of Chinese support to include the Land Bridge into their Belt and Road scheme has been floated. That is an alarm bell warning that the Land Bridge will become another huge white elephant. One that will cause massive losses to the Thai economy and place sovereignty under threat when the Chinese (who may have angled to get another rail contract) and any other foreign creditors finally come calling for Thailand’s transfer of ownership of the ports and rail lines to compensate them for their losses.

THE LOGICIAN