A news article came out yesterday about the acting Secretary of Transportation stating that the number of vehicles on the roads will fall by 1 million once all railway projects are completed. I countered on my social media that he might just eat his words. Friends were more humorous in their comments including one saying that might just happen in the year 2100 (when we’ve all passed). Then, there are comments about this happening without railways, thanks to the escalation in fuel prices.
I wrote about my take on future rail use in the following article here back in 2019. There are others I’ve written earlier that were based on observations and research we have conducted the last 3 decades on transportation mode shares and the impacts of new railway lines.
While I would love to see people shifting from private vehicle use to public transportation (especially to rail), I am more grounded with my expectations. The Metro Manila Subway line will certainly be a game changer, and probably partly because it is not along any of the current corridors. It is unlike Lines 1, 2, 3 and the future 7 that are along corridors where they are or will be directly competing with existing road public transport modes. In the latter cases, people already taking public transport (road-based) would likely be the same people shifting to rail. As for the private transport users, they might just stick to their cars – unless, of course, they couldn’t afford the fuels or to acquire an electric or hybrid vehicle.
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Caught (up) in traffic 