Even though railway development requires much higher development costs, they offer superior advantages to other forms of transport infrastructure that the Philippines cannot afford to overlook. They are the safest form of mass transportation and the most efficient in terms of passenger movement. They are also significantly more environmentally friendly than any other form of transportation. Fully electric trains have no direct emissions at all, and dieselpowered trains have emissions that are a fraction of those produced by road vehicles, ships or airplanes moving the same volume of passengers or goods.

There is also a historical context for rail infrastructure development. In virtually every country that has made the effort, expanding rail infrastructure, even in the modern era where it has competed with road and air transport, has positively correlated with economic growth. We can see this in examples such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the post-World War 2 era, and most spectacularly in China since the 1990s.

Even if the next administration does not wish to give infrastructure so high a profile as the Duterte administration’s Build, Build, Build program, maintaining the momentum in railway development will create a responsible legacy of facilitating the country’s progress far into the future. This should be a key campaign issue in the upcoming national election and of critical interest to Filipino voters, many of whom would directly benefit from it.