Having lived on the fringes of Metro Manila—for a long time in North Caloocan and in recent years in Las Piñas City—I have experienced all sorts of misfortunes and difficulties while commuting to Manila and Makati where I studied and worked.

In fact, I must have ticked all the boxes representing the difficulties that commuters in the metropolis go through in getting to school or work or home, such as clinging to the back of a packed jeepney or hanging on to the door of an overloaded bus, or walking for kilometers because of a public transportation strike. I endured all these countless times.

Sometimes it was the driver’s fault: I once got off a bus dazed after our bus hit a tree when the driver miscalculated a sharp curve.

Whenever there’s heavy downpour, I always pray that my ride does not get stalled and that I be spared from having to negotiate the murky, waist-deep floodwaters of Manila.

Brief respite 

When the light rail transit (LRT) was added as a commuting option, I thought the situation would improve. And it did for a time. The rail system cut my travel time by 30 minutes or even an hour, and it also protected me from getting stranded due to flooding after heavy rain. 

But the respite was brief. After only a few years, breakdowns started to happen, resulting in longer waiting times for the trains, chaotic scenes at the passenger ramp, and serpentine queues approaching the stations.

 There were even times when a train would lose power several meters short of the next station, forcing passengers to disembark and walk on the tracks.

It’s unfortunate that after more than 30 years, things have remained difficult for many commuters. The situation got worse during the pandemic-induced metro-wide lockdown that began in 2020 when all public transport services were suspended for weeks and months and commuters were left to fend for themselves.

Necessary shift

Not unless we shift from building new roads and skyways to building a public road-based transport system—rail-based, preferably—can the lives of commuters change for the better.

Despite the fact that public transport makes up three-quarters of the total trips taken in Metro Manila, a study made by the Move As One Coalition (composed of 140 organizations and 77,000 concerned citizens and taxpayers), titled “Move People, Not Just Cars: Correcting the systemic underfunding in national road-based public transport in the Philippines (2010 – 2021),” made a distressing finding: A measly 1 percent was budgeted to expand the metropolis’ road-based public transport supply and capacity.

The government’s car-centric approach to infrastructure development, according to the study, has had a deleterious effect on urban mobility. From 2010 to 2021, almost all—or 99 percent—of the P2.8-trillion road program budget went to road construction, widening and maintenance that ended up mostly serving private motorists.

The authors of the study urged that a greater share of scarce road space be allocated to pedestrians, cyclists, and users of road-based public transport. Sadly, the government missed the chance to do something right during the pandemic as only bicycle lanes were added to the roads, and most were not even laid out properly. 

But beyond bicycle lanes, our urban rail system should be expanded. The authors of the study believe that the government cannot merely “build, build, build” its way out of this public transport crisis. “National and local governments must spend a greater share of their time and budget on improving road-based public transport supply and capacity and active transport infrastructure,” they said.

At the moment, Metro Manila’s LRT-1, LRT-2, MRT (Metro Rail Transit)-3, and the Philippine National Railways can barely serve the Philippines’ 11.5 million to 12 million commuters.

While these lines are now being rehabilitated and extended, additional ones are still years away from completion: MRT-4 which will run from San Juan City to Taytay City in Rizal via Ortigas Avenue is expected to be operational by 2028; MRT-5 or the Metro Manila Subway that will run from Valenzuela City to FTI in Taguig City and Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 is only about 30-percent done; LRT-6 that will serve commuters of Cavite is targeted for completion in 2040; and the segments of the North-South Commuter Railway Project that will serve Central Luzon, Metro Manila, and Calabarzon are in varying stages of construction. 

Only MRT-7 is expected to be partially operational by the end of 2022.