PNR-Calamba to give NCR, South Luzon workers access to 300k jobs — study

MANILA, Philippines — The South Commuter Railway (SCR), also known as the PNR-Calamba project, will give workers access to more than 300,000 jobs across Southern Luzon and Metro Manila, an Asian Development Bank study found.

The study released Tuesday compared the number of jobs within an hour-long commute before and after the ADB-funded project’s completion. According to the Manila-based lender, the number of available jobs between Southern Luzon and the capital region was “highly unequal” at present.

“For example, commuters in Makati City in Metro Manila can access as many as 5.4 million jobs whereas those in the south can access as few as 31,000 jobs only. The discrepancy in job accessibility comes mainly from the high concentration of jobs in Metro Manila as well as the slow and unreliable commuting options between these regions,” the analysis said.

Once the railway is operational, it is projected to ease access to jobs by 15.3% in Southern Luzon and 8.5% in Metro Manila.

“For instance, a household in San Pedro City in Laguna will be able to access 3.4 million jobs via rail transport, compared with only 2.03 million jobs by road—a 67.5% increase in job opportunities,” the study noted.

Among Southeast Asian megacities, Metro Manila is the most congested city, an ADB research said in 2019.

The new ADB study elaborated that commuters from 48 out of the 64 cities that the railway passes through will discover more areas and job opportunities within a 1-hour window. ADB researchers reckoned that on average, households could access 300,000 jobs in that timespan alone.

At the same time, the study revealed that industrial workers who live in Southern Luzon could bat for higher-income jobs in Metro Manila as well once SCR is completed. Working in Metro Manila’s services industry, the ADB noted, nets monthly wages 29% higher than can be earned in South Luzon. The government plan, after all, interlinks the South commuter railway project with North Luzon provinces as well.

The SCR project is part of the longer 147-kilometer North-South Commuter Railway System which has 35 stations stretching from Calamba in Laguna to the Clark International Airport in Pampanga. Currently, the SCR is in the later stages of the government procurement process, and funding support for the project is already up for consideration by ADB’s Board of Directors in the fourth quarter of this year.

The SCR is designed to be 54.6 km in length with 19 stations between Blumentritt in the city of Manila in the north and Calamba in the south. Following the alignment of the existing PNR line, the SCR will pass through five cities in Laguna and five cities in Metro Manila. Each of these 10 cities will have one or more train stations.

The SCR will have a speed (likely average) of 80 km per hour, allowing riders from Calamba to get off at Blumentritt station within 1 hour — shorter than the usual 2- to 3-hour travel by bus.

Similarly, the findings support assertions that accessible public transport options could, in fact, ease the widening income gap in the Philippine capital, worsened by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Years before the pandemic, Metro Manila traffic has already deteriorated to levels unseen previously as commuter trains bogged down in a rush hour and private vehicles clogged public highways. When the pandemic hit in 2020, mass transport was restricted, forcing many workers to rely heavily on two-wheeled transport options like bicycles and motorcycles.