Two New Railway Lines Have Been Proposed for Metro Manila

Two new railways systems have been proposed by private companies, the Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday (April 12). 

The first one is a new Metro Rail Transit (MRT) line that will run between Monumento in Caloocan to San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan. The proposal, which the DOTr is calling MRT-11, is essentially a build-operate-transfer scheme that may be connected to the currently-under-construction MRT-7, which will run from Quezon City to Bulacan. Officials of the agency are currently evaluating the proposal for MRT-11.

“If the documents are complete, we will review it,” DOTr Secretary Jaime Bautista said during the general membership meeting of the Management Association of the Philippines. “And since it’s an unsolicited proposal, it will be subject to a Swiss Challenge.” 

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The second proposal is a railway along C5 road between Pasay City and Taguig City. Bautista provided no other details about the line other than to say that project costs are still “moving parts.”

Other railway lines in the pipeline, he added, include another railway line in Cavite and an extension railway to Batangas, as well as train systems in Leyte, Panay Island, and Cebu.   

“We are just completing the feasibility studies,” he said.  

Bautista said other railway lines are currently in the pipeline, including another railway line in Cavite, an extension railway to Batangas, as well as train systems in Leyte, Panay Island, and Cebu.  

“We are just completing the feasibility studies,” the secretary said. 

Three mass railway systems are currently operating in Metro Manila: LRT Line 1, LRT Line 2 and MRT Line 3. Bautista says the next one to go online is MRT Line 7, whose initial operations is targeted to commence by the second quarter of 2025. A subway system is also already being built.

Bautista added that the DOTr is planning to privatize the operations of the LRT-2 and MRT-3 within two years. 

“We have already engaged the ADB (Asian Development Bank) to help us identify who will be a good operator for LRT-2 and MRT-3,” he said. “The MRT-3 is on an existing build-lease-transfer [BLT] with a private group and this will end in 2025 so when the BLT arrangement is finished, we can privatize the operations of LRT-2 and MRT-3.”