Cheap ‘skates’ ride takes a deadly turn

PAMPLONA, Camarines Sur—It was not a train that ran over and killed 6-year-old Christian Aniceto while he was crossing the railroad at a bend in Barangay San Ramon in Pamplona, Camarines Sur, on Nov. 9. Neither was 64-year-old Bernardo Samar a train passenger when he was thrown off and died along the tracks.

Aniceto and Samar were fatalities in an accident involving “skates,” a motor-driven contraption mimicking roller skates but sliding on railway tracks.

Skates is the cheapest and most accessible means of public conveyance to poor villagers living near the tracks of the Philippine National Railways (PNR). Farmers from Barangays Poblacion, San Ramon, Burabod and San Rafael, all in Pamplona, take the ride to bring their produce to the market.

For as long as there is no cheaper way of going in and out of the villages and despite safety hazards, the residents continue to take the risky ride.

With a platform measuring at least 16 square feet in area and made of wood and iron bars, the skates can load up to 15 passengers sitting on two wooden benches. The platform is outfitted with bearings as wheels.

Improved design

Unlike before when the driver pushed the skates to start sliding, the improved design includes a 7-10 hp motor, pulley and belt connected to a mechanism that turns the wheel bearings.

When the latest accident occurred early this month, the skates was overloaded with 17 mourners who were headed back to Burabod after attending a burial at a cemetery in the town center. In July, a skates driver was sideswiped and killed by a PNR train in Barangay Mangkawayan in the neighboring town of Libmanan.

Junio Ragrario, PNR general manager, says the use of the railway line by skates is prohibited, but he puts the police to task in enforcing the ban in the localities. He says he has been talking with skates owners and operators, appealing to them to stop their operations.

He, however, believes that once more train runs are scheduled, skates drivers and operators will eventually be discouraged into plying their routes because of the increasing risks.

Joseph Det, 38, a skates driver for the last seven years, says that although the contraption is light enough for two adults to carry, it could easily be derailed when it runs over other “pedestrians,” such as a frog stuck on the tracks.

Det says he collects only P5 per passenger compared to the two-way P20-fare being charged by tricycle drivers taking the access road to the highway or by jeepney drivers taking the highway to the town center. He earns an average of P150 for at least 10 hours of ferrying passengers and their cargoes.

Not registered

Mayor Gemino Imperial could not estimate the current number of skates because the mode of transport was not registered with any government agency. “It’s actually illegal but we cannot stop its operation because it’s the most accessible and cheapest means of transportation for some 3,000 individuals or 500 farming families in my town,” he said.

Pamplona does not have funds to build new roads that will directly connect the villages to the center, Imperial says. Nestled on the vast plains of the Bicol River Basin, it is a fourth-class municipality (pop.: 35,000) with some P47 million in yearly income.

More than 100 skates ply the 12-kilometer railway line traversing Pamplona, Det says. Skate travel through the highway from Naga City covers a distance of 16 km.

Rosita Deomano, 65, says she is aware of the risk when riding on the skates, especially with commuter trains running regularly every day. But she says it is still the cheaper and faster means of travel for villagers going to their farms.

Constancio Toledano, manager of the PNR section in the Tagkawayan (Quezon)-Bicol line, has suggested to the PNR main office to commission a train to leave the station every hour as what buses do when traveling through the main highways like Edsa and stop anywhere to pick up passengers.

“With that kind of frequency, I don’t think the skates could still use the railroad,” Toledano says.

He recalled that PNR administrations in the late 1990s to the early 2000 had organized special train operations to confiscate and impound skates  using the railroad. The drivers and operators were given stern warnings and fines before their skates were released, he said, and this had resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of skates.

Toledano believes that the skates will be totally removed if the railways are finally freed of thousands of squatters living along the tracks from Bicol to Metro Manila.