Dreaming of more trains for the Philippines
I wrote this piece while on a six-hour trip on board a train from Berlin, Germany to The Hague, Netherlands. For almost two months now, I have been living in Berlin because of a fellowship grant given by the Center for Advanced Studies of the Humboldt University’s Faculty of Law.
The fellowship grant has given me the privilege of interacting with more than 30 academic scholars and practitioners of different fields of study, from different countries all over the world. The program, entitled “Reflexive Globalisation and the Law: Colonial Legacies and their Implications in the 21st Century,” aims to engender discussion and debate on the various impacts of colonial legacies from the points of view of scholars from former colonial masters and former colonies. Once a week, we gather together and take turns presenting our preliminary papers to the group, plus supplemental readings that are relevant to our paper. Our papers are then subjected to frank but helpful comments and criticisms from all the participants.
Because of the fellowship, I’ve been staying in an apartment several kilometers from the university. I take the subway train every day because it’s fast, cheap, and very convenient. I ride the train with passengers from all walks of life, rich and poor alike, who make the daily commute from home to work or school and back. Sometimes during the weekends, I take the trams and the buses to explore the city, go to the museums, or visit friends. Unlike the days of my youth when there was no internet and transportation apps yet, it has now become so easy to go around because you just input your location and your intended destination and online apps like Google Maps provide you with the full transportation itinerary, from what train line to take, where to disembark to get a connecting train, and street directions all the way to your intended destination.
I obtained a Deutschland Ticket at a cost of 63 euros (P4,536) per month, and the ticket gives me unlimited rides on all local public transport throughout Germany such as trains, trams, and buses. If one looks at a train route map of Germany, it looks like an illustration of blood veins that connect and crisscross different states (the equivalent of our provinces) and cities, for the whole length and breadth of Germany.
In all developed countries, the train is the fastest and cheapest option of land transportation to get to a destination because they have dedicated tracks that make them travel from one station to another, without stopping at multiple traffic lights. They arrive almost always on the very minute of their preannounced arrival time in every station, so there are generally no hitches when one stops at a station to catch a connecting train that brings one to a final destination.
I’ve said it many times before and I will pontificate about it again, until our government gets it, and until our people demand and push for our government to start a master plan of extensive train network for our whole country.
Trains are the way to go if we want our people, produce, and manufactured products to have ease of transportation, and if we want our country to go on a long-term progress. Our existing transportation policy is completely wrong because it is almost entirely focused on road vehicle transportation. We are wasting so much public funds yearly on road construction, maintenance, expansion, flyovers, expressways, and the like. It is an antipoor transportation policy because 80 percent of our roads are utilized by private vehicles, and only 20 percent by public transportation. This means that the poor are heavily subsidizing the rich by funding roads that are overwhelmingly devoted to private cars. It’s good that there are additional train lines being built in Metro Manila, but it’s still not enough.
We must shift away from private transportation and go into community transportation, which a train system is. Imagine the number of vehicles reduced from our roads with the number of people who take the trains instead. Imagine the air pollution that’s reduced, the traffic that we unclog, and the amount of time saved by people who will utilize the trains. Imagine the amount of public funds saved, both from the expenses of regular road repairs and from corruption in public works projects. Most importantly, families do not have to spend a fortune in buying a car, which is a constantly depreciating asset that does not build wealth for the family.
The trains in Europe leave and go regardless of how many passengers get on board at every station, which can only mean that the trains are either maintained with public funds or they are private enterprises subsidized with public funds. This should be the case because transportation should be a public utility and not a private business purely driven by profit.
Once the snow stops, I will use my unlimited travel ticket and go city hopping all over Germany. When will we see the day when the Philippines will even just start dreaming and aspiring for trains in its provinces and cities?
