Finally, we’re seeing both the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) publicly agree on a transport philosophy that upholds the primacy of commuters over cars. At least, that’s what DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon and DOTr Secretary Giovanni Lopez both declared on the same stage at the last general membership meeting of the Management Association of the Philippines. It would be a welcome departure from the car-centric approach that appears to have guided land transport planning and policy in our country over the past decades.
Car-centricity may not have been explicit in past government plans or policy documents, but was nonetheless evident in how public investments favored road construction and repair over the wide provision of public mass transport facilities, especially by rail. For instance, I’ve long considered it a mortal sin that our transport authorities deliberately missed connecting the Metro Manila mass rail transit system to the airport, even with the train depot of LRT-1 lying right beside the domestic air terminal. A transport official back then privately admitted to me the simple reason: the taxi industry strongly lobbied against the airport link. It amounted to favoring cars (as taxis) over mass transport. More disgusting was how it put the vested interests of a few (taxi operators) over the greater good of the many (the riding public), in a patently antipeople move.
Car-centricity also shaped the national vision embodied in Ambisyon Natin 2040, which included the average Filipino family’s aspiration to own a private vehicle—no doubt influenced by the prevailing context of a highly inadequate public transport system. This expressed aspiration might not have been so prominent had mass transport not been the punishing ordeal it has commonly been and continues to be. And as seen in most world capitals, central to convenient and extensive mass transport systems is rail transport, of which we have woefully little.
London today reportedly has 491 kilometers (km) of urban commuter rail lines, while New York has 399, Tokyo 337, and Seoul 327. Closer to home, our neighboring Asean capitals, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, and Jakarta have 205, 241, 280, and 396 km, respectively. In terms of population density, London has about 28,500 people per km of commuter rail line, New York has 21,300; Tokyo 41,500; Seoul 29,400; Kuala Lumpur 10,300, Singapore 25,700, Bangkok 40,700, and Jakarta 27,000. For Metro Manila, it’s a measly 52 km of rail lines from LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3 combined, for a density of 269,000 people per km. Even just aiming for 40,000 people per km, similar to Tokyo and Bangkok, Metro Manila should have at least 350 km of urban commuter rail lines, about 300 km more than what it has today. But if we aim for the more typical density of 30,000 people per km, we should really have 467 km, or nine times what we have today.
Japan, known to be among the top railway-capable countries worldwide, has long helped us develop our rail transport system, having in fact funded LRT-2 and the rehabilitation of MRT-3. It funds most of the ongoing 33-km, 17-station Metro Manila Subway Project (MMSP) from Valenzuela to Bicutan, branching to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3, thereby belatedly providing a railway link to the airport. Along with it is the 147-km, 36-station North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) to run from New Clark City to Calamba, Laguna, also partly funded by the Asian Development Bank. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) has extended 727.8 billion yen in loans (around P300 billion) for MMSP since it broke ground in early 2019, and is contributing 786 billion yen (around P340 billion) for NSCR. Both projects have suffered repeated delays due to persistent and exasperating right-of-way issues. Then came the legislators who infamously shifted budget allocations for foreign-assisted projects to unprogrammed appropriations to give way to their questionable pet projects, thereby impeding budget releases for and stalling these crucial projects further. While both MMSP and NSCR were earlier planned to be partially operational by 2022 and fully operational by 2027 to 2028, DOTr now aims for completion in 2032, with more in the pipeline.
Jica’s assistance toward our railway-enabled future included grant assistance to establish and operate the Philippine Railway Institute, a facility aimed to train over 15,000 personnel to support the coming new rail facilities. This complements Japan’s assistance on the hardware with assured “peopleware” to manage, operate, maintain, and sustain them.
If Dizon and Lopez will be true to their words, Filipino city dwellers can look forward to a future of more livable cities. But don’t hold your breath just yet.
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