China-made trains coming for PNR’s Manila-Bicol line

MANILA, Philippines — Commuters traveling from Metro Manila to the Bicol Region and vice versa can look forward to a more comfortable and shorter trip in 2021, with the signing of a contract on Wednesday between transport officials and Chinese locomotive manufacturers.

In October, China-based CRRC Zhuzhou was declared the winning bidder in a project meant to revive the Philippine National Railways (PNR) Bicol line and improve mass transit in southern Luzon through the delivery of three train sets composed of three railcars.

The projected train travel “would cut down significantly, up to 80 percent, the travel time between Manila and the Bicol Region,” said PNR General Manager Junn Magno.

Until the Manila-Bicol route was suspended in 2014 because of rail damage caused by typhoons, right-of-way issues and lack of trains, it usually took some 12 hours to travel the 479 kilometers of tracks between the two points.

Long-haul service

Once the three standard-gauge diesel multiple unit (DMU) trains arrive in the country in June 2021, they would be deployed for long-haul service from Calamba, Laguna, to Naga City, Camarines Sur, and eventually to Legazpi City in Albay, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said.

The trains can accommodate 168 passengers, with 36 in business class, 52 in first class, and 80 in second-class accommodations, Transport Secretary Arthur Tugade said.

The P175-billion PNR Bicol project will span 581 km and will be funded through official development assistance from China. The DOTr has allocated P100.6 billion, or 98 percent, of its 2020 infrastructure budget to its ongoing railway projects, five times its railway allocation for 2019.

DOTr goals

Despite that large chunk, the railway sector still suffers from a funding gap of P191 billion, with international development agencies eyed for the shortfall.

During a DOTr budget briefing in September, Transport Undersecretary Timothy Batan outlined the goals of the railway sector by 2022, among them increasing the route length of active railways from 1,144 km to 1,900 km; opening more train stations from 59 to 169; increasing the number of train coaches from 221 to 1,425, and attracting more passengers from one million to three million.

The Tutuban-Naga route, popularly known as “Bicol Express,” was still under study, according to Magno, while the South Long Haul “is under construction.”

The South Long-Haul Railway is one of the six new railway projects under the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program.At present, only the Bicol commuter train for the Naga City-Sipocot route in Camarines Sur is operational.

Poet, railways enthusiast and Ateneo de Naga professor Victor Dennis Nierva recalled that the Bicol Express goes all the way back to the 1920s, when the Americans launched the Manila-Legazpi railway line.

The long line of 17 to 20 railcars had several classes—from sleeper trains to reclining seats, economy class, a dining car and freighter cars, he said in an interview for an online site.

Without the competition offered by regular buses, ferries or planes, trains became the economic lifeline of the Bicol Region, Niervas said.

The train stations also became de facto marketplaces, with the lumbering trains pulling out of either Tutuban or Paco stations laden with goods from Manila and nearby provinces.

On their return trip, the trains would carry produce from the southern provinces that they passed by on the way back to the city.

Instant couriers

Trains also became instant couriers at a time when delivery services were not yet available. Because the trains also passed small towns where they picked up passengers and goods, regular train users could send messages and stuff to their relatives and friends living in places along the route, assured that these would reach their intended recipients.

Regular train service also made migration to the big cities easier, as people sought a better life. At the same time, the trains gave entrepreneurs and big businesses easy access to tracts of land that could be developed as well as sizable markets that could be tapped.