The Improvement of the Philippine Railway System and the Way to Its Sustainability

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Japan also has many protocols and strategies to maximize efficiency. Japan places much of its focus on the skill and excellence of its train drivers. The drivers are well trained until they acquire the skill to know exactly what speed to drive the train so that they arrive at the next station precisely on time. An example shown in a video showed a 0.19 second margin of error of arrival to the station, meaning that the train arrived at the station 0.19 seconds before the predicted time. This ensures that the people will know when to come to the train station because they are assured that the train will never be late. Because of this, all of the train trips will be maximized, and the people of Japan will rarely be late to their work or schooling. The train drivers are also trained to know what to do during different types of emergencies and problems. The trains themselves are also well maintained to maximize efficiency and durability. The trains are taken apart, inspected, and cleaned every four months by hand. This ensures the train’s maximum potential is used, and so that every part of the train is well maintained.

Hong Kong’s subway system is very efficient and services commuters well. Having 5 million daily train commuters, they are able to earn 175% of the operating costs, which is cheaper due to its efficient use of resources. Similarly to Japan, they have a 99.9% on-time arrival rate. This earns a 2 billion dollar annual profit for Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a relatively small place, almost comparable to the size of Metro Manila, and its railway systems are able to accommodate 5 million people (Ng). In comparison, if Metro Manila were to have an equally efficient subway system, much of the traffic would be decreased, because the system would accommodate a larger fraction of the population.

Bangkok had a transport problem in the 1970s, and to solve this, they proposed a solution including a rail service system. Due to the high construction cost of railways, Bangkok decided to initially use bus services on the elevated structure, then when demand needed, substitute it to the rail service. This reduced the initial cost for the introduction of the railway. They also reduced construction costs by establishing routes on roads, some sections parallel to existing railways. The MTS, or Mass Rapid Transit, plans were generally successful (Kakizaki 208), and these strategies can be applied in the Philippines due to the similarity in the problem of actually beginning construction of the train lines.

The evidences given prove that there are many areas of improvement in the Philippine railway public transportation systems. It is already seen in many of the Philippine’s neighboring countries that improving its railway system increased the efficiency and productivity of its people, leading towards better growth and development for the country. The many manufacturing and maintenance protocols and practices of these other countries must be adopted and implemented in the Philippines to maximize effectiveness of the Philippine railway system, and effectively improving the traffic situation and efficiency of the Philippines and its people respectively.

In any railways system, there will be variable and constant railroad costs and expenses. A result of the invariability of railroad expenses is that the cost per unit of traffic decrease as volume of traffic increases. This will be true, however only to a certain limit. It will only be true until it reaches the maximum point of the train service’s efficiency. Exceeding the limit will cause crowding in the facilities and problems in unit cost. Because of these facts, it is understandable that it will be difficult for a railway system in the Philippines to be profitable due to the high population of MRT and LRT commuters. Because of this, the Philippines must find other means of creating value from transit for it to be sustainable.

It has been recently evident that property values rise greatly when there is a transit system present nearby. This is due to many positive effects of having a transit system in the vicinity, such as increased accessibility to and from other areas resulting in faster daily travel time, better air quality and reduced traffic congestion to name a few. This causes an increase in property values, both commercial and residential due to an increase in demand. Nowadays, transit funding has been expensive and difficult to manage due to budgeting and population growth. Because of this, policy makers, transit planners, and elected officials are interested in the investment in the idea of utilizing this increase in property values to fund transit infrastructure and improvements. This idea is known as “value capture” (Fogarty, Eaton, Belzer, and Ohland 1).

In America, there were varying levels of increased property values of houses and apartments due to nearby railway systems. Examples of increases in residential property values due to mass transit range from a 6.2% increase within 900 feet from the Portland MAX light rail system to a 20% increase within 1000 feet from the Chicago METRA commuter rail system. Most of the statistics show a positive impact of value capture on the property values; however one out of the eleven train stations studied to see a rise in residential property values, the VTA light rail station, caused a 10.8% decrease within 900 feet from the system. Most of the commercial real estate values on the other hand resulted in a positive increase in property values. However, areas in the vicinity of two out of the ten studied railways systems resulted in a 0% property value increase. These values were obtained from tables 2.2 and 2.3 of the Center for Transit Oriented Development’s research paper on value capture. These show that not every study of transit and property values has found a positive correlation. However, the negative findings may have several possible explanations, such as the fact that one of the research studies of one of the negative values in the table collected data from the recessions years of the early 1990s. This time reflected the depressed single family home prices and the low real estate activity of the period. Because of these external factors, the concept of value capture must still be further studied in order for countries to concretely be able to utilize this benefit. (Fogarty, Eaton, Belzer, and Ohland 5-11).

To optimize the outcome of value capture to utilize its full potential, there are at least three factors that must be considered. A good economy and healthy real estate market conditions are necessary because transit alone does not bring development, it utilizes a portion of existing market demand to leverage accessibility. A supportive public policy is needed because supportive public policies targeted towards leveraging

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