my philstar column today - The tragedy of PNR is not only the neglect typical in a government run business or service. Worse, a succession of presidents appointed managers who apparently didn’t have the ability to run the railway service. Some may have milked PNR to the point of making it a shadow of its past. They even almost fully demolished the historic Paco Station for nothing. A JICA consultant, who is probably the most learned man about Philippine transportation, lamented that we once had a good rail transit system. According to Dr. Shizuo Iwata, that was circa 1920s. We had 85 kilometers of rail lines then, Dr. Iwata said, more than the pitiful 50 kilometers we have now. The pre-WW2 tranvia system itself was described as state-of-the-art and second to none in East Asia. It is hard to believe we were actually pace setters… hindi kulelat like we are today.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 02:20:51 +0000