INCOMING Bicol Saro party-list Rep. Terry Ridon yesterday vowed to push for the revival of “Bicol Express,” the long-stalled Philippine National Railway-South Long Haul (PNR-SLH) project envisioned to cut travel time from Metro Manila to Albay or Sorsogon from 12 hours to only about four hours.
Ridon said in a statement that he has committed to pursuing this initiative started by outgoing Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, who has been urging the Marcos administration to consider the procurement of bullet trains for the project.
The former Kabataan party-list representative, also the former chairman-CEO of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP), is the convenor of Infrawatch PH, a think tank focused on infrastructure development in vital areas such as transport, power, telecoms, water, housing, digital and natural resources.
Villafuerte, who has been elected governor of CamSur, expressed optimism that the project will be rolled out in the remaining half of the Marcos presidency, saying it would energize the local economy and tourism in the province and the rest of the Bicol region.
He urged the Departments of Finance (DOF), of Transportation (DOTr) and of Economy, Planning and Development (DepDev) to work closely together to finally secure financing for the Bicol Express project, whether via the Official Development Assistance (ODA) or Public-Private Partnership (PPP) modes or a combination of both.
Since Manila-Beijing negotiations on funding for the PNR-SLH Project fell through towards the end of the Duterte administration, Villafuerte said the Bicol Express should be funded from new sources such as European countries like France, which has already expressed interest in financing the project.
“While countries such as Vietnam are already building high-speed train systems, I think it’s about time that the Philippines similarly develop a high-speed rail,” Villafuerte said in a separate statement.
“Based on research, all countries have developed because they have efficient railway systems. Can you imagine if there were a Manila-Bicol high-speed rail that could cut travel time to three hours? That will develop all the areas and decongest traffic from Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Quezon all the way to the Bicol provinces,” he added.
Villafuerte proposed that the PNR-SLH project include the commercial development of the train stations along the railway and adjoining properties available for such use, by private groups via the PPP route, “to make the Bicol Express a more financially viable and sustainable venture, and at the same time create economic opportunities and jobs in these adjoining lots.”
Villafuerte suggested that the “Bicol Express” could be a high-speed or “bullet” train that could be patterned after Japan’s Shinkansen, which has a top speed of 320 km per hour.
He recalled that President Marcos earlier ordered the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to study how it can expedite the Bicol Express projects as well as the modernization of the Naga Airport during a meeting of the Regional Development Council (RDC) in CamSur’s capital of Pili last March.
