The persistent demand for rail

There is yet again another initiative for putting up a rail service in Metro Cebu.  This has not been taken up by the media yet and I doubt it will ever be unless the proponent is the usual kind that lacks the initiative of ensuring completed staff work first and depends on enticing media coverage before doing the necessary CSW.  Four and a half decades of proposing, enticing, and promising for rail but failing to prove its efficacy to the people.

Not that the people need to be convinced.  As we erstwhile have stated, people in general believe rail transport is the ultimate thing we could have.  Hundreds of cities in the world displayed how this system works starting years ago, especially in other countries.  It has become such a symbol of development that most people believe we have not reached “that level” if we don’t have railroads crisscrossing our city.

And yet, it really has not taken a sufficient hold in the bureaucracy.  It started with the first one submitted in 1989 which remained just a piece of paper, a proposal without even a financial or economic study to prop it up.  Of course, as is often the case, it was submitted by a rail transport supplier, which is only too happy to sell and get a handsome profit on, regardless of whether it really helps us economically or not.  Sure, it can be built, today or in 1989, but even up to today, no one has submitted an iota of economic proof that a rail system - MRT, LRT, Monorail or even a cable one works.

Now the Cebu BRT is being completed and the hope for a “train” system by the rail enthusiasts has dimmed.  Not that it may never be built – we live in a constantly changing, developing, and growing world, towns grow into cities, and cities merge into metropolises, which needs effective and efficient mass transport systems.  Of course, the majority see only rail/train systems and consider buses as obsolete and/or inferior. That’s why the Cebu BRT did not really generate the kind of excitement that a train/rail system would have.  Inside most of us, especially the men, we’re still little boys, and who cries on Christmas when you see a toy train choo-choo-ing in the toy store!

Regardless, the BRT is becoming a reality, though, even I, myself, is perplexed by the seeming slowness of its rollout.  The one in Metro Manila is even more so and has been exposed to the same uncertainty.  I had my doubts on that one, too – not that I don’t support the BRT for Manila, but on where it’s built.  For the same reason we argue between rail and bus (they’re basically the same except for the wheel material – steel or rubber), they’re the same public transport system and shouldn’t be competing along the same corridor.

For Metro Cebu, sure the rail may still prove to be viable, if it runs on a different corridor (Talisay/beyond to Consolacion/beyond).  But, as nobody is working on that, it will remain just a far-off dream.  LRTs/MRTs don’t grow on trees!