Road vs railway: Which one is cost-efficient?

First of three parts

With traffic congestion an ever persistent everyday topic, pundits and experts alike ponder what the situation would have been if our country persisted in building railways and tramways as programmed by the colonial government in the beginning of the 20th century. When the American colonizers arrived at the scene they already had a pretty good inventory, taking stock of the existing population and towns, of a pretty comprehensive network of “Camino Real” (Royal Roads) roads, and even a few navigable waterways. Both forms of transportation were quite up-to-the-minute in those days when Spain ruled over the Philippines.

When the British introduced the steam locomotive and railways to the world, they were not remiss in introducing the same to the Philippines with the establishment of the Manila Railroad Company in Luzon. As foreseen then, the railroad became the backbone of inter-province freight and passenger transport. But after the second World War, the US economy had a change of heart. Owing to previous decades being dominated by the railroad “robber barons,” Detroit, the home of the mass-market self-propelled motor vehicle — the automobile — was lobbying for more roads as against more railways. Also, after the war, anything America did was aped by its former colony, and we thus found our government building more and more roads and neglecting the railways.

Today, our cities are exploding into megacities with population densities demanding high-volume mass-transit systems. Whereas many of the mature cities in the developed world are well into third- or fourth-generation subways, commuter rail and light rail, we are still stuck with an ancient and unresponsive public transport system that relies on thousands of mom-and-pop-owned public utility jeeps and buses. The addition of three mass transit rail lines to the city in the past 30 years was not enough to compensate for the backlog in road-building, hence the reason for today’s overcrowded roads.

The clamor now is to maximize what little road space we have, and the agreed solution is to restrict the circulation of private vehicles and phase out or transfer the buses and jeeps to less congested routes in favor of a network of commuter rail and trams. But is our case a case of road vs. railway, either one or the other? Or is it just a matter of horses for courses, i.e.; railways for mass transit, roads for door-to-door?

First, let us get the absolutes out of the way. For sheer independence, freedom to travel, and options on company, time and route, nothing beats private transport — which is dependent on roads. Roads literally take you from door to door. But for sheer communal predictability, nothing beats railways. Their sheer exclusivity gives the rail operator the advantage and the power to dictate when, with whom and how one travels. Railways work best when transferring large groups from one passenger collection point to another. Individual journeys to the “last mile home” are left to other forms of transport.

So far, so complementary. Cost-wise, it’s hard to beat railways. For a ticket, you don’t have to worry about car maintenance, garage, registration, fuel, insurance, driver — although upcoming autonomous driving programs may soon make the driver redundant — map or navigation, road taxes, vehicle safety inspection on top of the purchase price. So, what goes in favor of the private car? Privacy and independence. And, yes, this freedom costs a lot.

When a railway system reaches many destinations, works most of the day, is safe, secure, comfortable, fast, prompt, reliable — there is no incentive to drive anymore, unless the freedom or the chore of driving tempts you. The problem comes when the railway system delivers none of the things listed above, or worse, non-existent.

Self- drive private transport becomes attractive and even necessary, as in our case (like in many emerging economies). In the absence of high-capacity rail-based mass transit, private transport is more efficient time-wise, considering the criteria cited above.