Hopes are high on the revival of the Manila-Bicol high speed rail system, whose development was abandoned by China, as the Japanese government expressed interest in funding the feasibility study of the project.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said Japan, which has just formally committed financing for five big-ticket projects under President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.s’ flagship infrastructure program “Build Better More (BBM),” is very keen on doing a feasibility study on the “Bicol Express” project.
Villafuerte leads a group of legislators and local executives in the province who have been long batting for the revival of the “Bicol Express” railway service.
In a recent meeting with Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Endo Kazuya and former Philippine chief representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Sakamoto Takema, Villafuerte said Tokyo was “very interested” in exploring the possibility of building a high-speed railway from Metro Manila to the Bicol provinces.
The Bicolano lawmaker said a new feasibility study is necessary since the original plan for the “Bicol Express,” which the Chinese government was supposed to finance and build—but did not—in the previous administration, was not a high-speed rail system.
“Don’t believe those who say high-speed rail is impossible. When we unite, help each other, everything is possible,” said Villafuerte, who is also president of the National Unity Party (NUP), in a social media post.
Villafuerte pitched the project to the present Marcos administration with possible funding from new sources such as official development assistance (ODA) from Tokyo.
This, after Manila-Beijing negotiations on Chinese funding for the Philippine National Railway-South Long Haul (PNR-SLH) Project fell through by the end of the previous Duterte administration.
If and when funding for the “Bicol Express,” indeed comes from ODA from Japan, Villafuerte suggested that, given the Japanese’ expertise in “bullet trains,” Tokyo may build a “bullet” train instead of a standard rail network to cut travel time from Metro Manila to Bicol from a half-day to just about four hours end-to-end.