Some people believe that the nations’ coffers should be allocated to railways in lieu of roads. While there are some benefits to this practice, I partly disagree with this notion due to the risk it presents.
On the one hand, the option to channel public money into railways is attractive for several reasons. From an environmental perspective, the development of public transports, particularly trains, make enormous contributions to the decline in emissions. To illustrate, the upgradation of railways ranging from expanding to modernizing them could act as an incentive for citizens to commute by trains more regularly, leading to the diminution of carbon footprints. As a result, greenhouse effects and environmental-related issues including air pollution, noise pollution could be alleviated. Additionally, from a societal perspective, spending money on railways plays a pivotal role in lessening traffic problems ranging from daily congestion to accidents. This is mainly due to the fact that the less vehicles travel on the road, the less risks damaging to people occur.
Despite the above-mentioned advantages, I believe that the national budget should be allocated to enhance roads. The option to invest in railways might not be suitable for some developing countries. In fact, those countries have scarce resources ranging from finance to the inadequacy of expertises and advanced equipment for constructions, which could hinder the building progress and lead to budget’s deficit. This is perfectly exemplified in the case of Viet Nam, where the project of constructing railway systems took 40 years to be completed due to difficulties in finance and infrastructure. Moreover, if the governments spend money on railways without paying attention to roads, the state of transportations can be exacerbated. In fact, the growing popularity of public transports are unable to fully replace the main roads and if the main systems are severely degraded, there will be more accidents threatening to the safety of citizens.
In conclusion, while there are many benefits regarding the lower level of pollution and less traffic jams, I still believe that it is more disadvantageous to spend money on railways because of the inadequacy of resources and the degradation of roads. It is advisable that governments should strike a balance between two types of transportations.