All aboard! Luzon railway up for rehab

"I almost want to hear that a train had been robbed," a businessman recently kidded Speaker Jose de Venecia. "At least that would mean they’re still running." His wish will soon come true. No, no, not about a train heist, but that railcars will again zip from La Union to Legazpi City. More than that, if De Venecia would have his way, the trains will roll all the way up to Ilocos Norte, and down to Sorsogon onto Samar-Leyte and Cagayan de Oro-Iligan.

Trains are a passion for the Speaker. They used to be the major mode of transport in his native Pangasinan. Old-timers recall how sweethearts would meet them at the station for Christmas homecomings from the Tutuban in Manila, where they study. Farmers sent their produce to the big city on tracks, too.

Over the past three decades, sadly, the Philippine National Railways north and south lines deteriorated. First to go were the locomotives, which chugged their last from thousands of miles of use. The coaches were then converted into roadside cafeterias. The tracks rusted. The ties become home and garden decors. Rail bridges alongside the Pan Philippines Highway became mere conversation pieces for parents explaining to quizzical kids what the relics were.

De Venecia aims to restore the PNR to its old glory. As far back as October 2001, he had submitted to President Arroyo a blueprint for doing so. Work would be in six simultaneous fronts:

• rehabilitation of the south line from Manila to Legazpi;

• revival of the north line from Manila to San Fernando, La Union;

• extension of the south line from Legazpi to Matnog, Sorsogon;

• laying of a new line from Calamba, Laguna, to Batangas City;

• refitting of the Panay railway from Iloilo to Roxas cities; and

• construction of a new line from Cagayan de Oro to Iligan cities.

That would take a lot of money, the same commodity whose scarcity had led to the disrepair in the first place. De Venecia computed the work to cost P38 billion, roughly $730 million. But he saw the cash sources.

De Venecia noted that, for lack of viable projects in the past, the government had not tapped at least $400 million (P21 billion) in aid from Canada, Europe and Japan. The National Economic and Development Authority can readily submit the railway plan to the donors.

Congress can appropriate another P7 billion ($130 million) over two years. This and next year’s budgets already allocate several millions to upgrade PNR’s remaining locomotives and coaches.

The balance of $200 million (P10 billion) can come from foreign investors and local partners who would build and operate the new lines for eventual transfer to the government after expiration of the concessions.

They were on the same wavelength and Mrs. Arroyo liked De Venecia’s scheme. Problem is, she had taken the metro from Manila to Los Baños, Laguna, only weeks before their meeting, and saw for herself the thousands of squatter shanties that line both sides of the tracks. Some of the kubo were so close to the onrushing train she could brush them with her fingers.

De Venecia took the same ride with 20 members of the House committees on transportation, housing and appropriations. At the end of the line, they already had a solution. The first project of the housing department that they’re forming through a new law would be to erect 20,000 tenement units alongside the rails. The structures would be ten meters wide, with no doors and windows at the back facing the tracks. That would leave a five-meter buffer zone on either size of the railway’s 15-meter right of way.

If that works, the PNR can also study the possibility of extending the rails from La Union to Ilocos Sur and Norte, then on to Cagayan and Isabela, and down to Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, and Bulacan, then back to Manila in a loop. New lines can also be laid down in the islands of Samar, Leyte, Negros and Cebu.

That’s too far into the future, though. For now, De Venecia has lured Korea and China to repair the Manila-Calamba and Calamba-Legazpi lines, respectively. The trains won’t be as fast and sleek as the Japanese bullets or the French TGV. But at the P38-billion initial fund, the system would benefit more Filipinos than the P62-billion monorail proposed for Makati-Manila alone.

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It turns out that the virus alert against "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus" (Gotcha, 11 Nov. 2002), which two friends in the US sent me, is a hoax. E-mail with that subject is safe after all. Sorry for whatever inconvenience I might have caused.

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