A scaled-down M’danao railroad plan

It remains a novelty only because it is a dream that has remained unfulfilled. Any talk of it today tends to give credit to the present dispensation for being the ingenious maverick that came up with the idea. But the administration would truly deserve the credit only if the idea gets to be realized within the next five years because the fact is, it is a dream that goes back 81 years ago.

The Mindanao railway began as a sketchy side story in the minds of Manuel L. Quezon and Francis Burton Harrison. Through 1935 and 1936, the Commonwealth government faced a conundrum: Which was better for a fledgling government that in 10 years was expected to be independent from the United States—build roads or build railways?

The transcripts of the plan would have been lost to popular research were it not for the Philippine Diary Project. Deftly organized by Inquirer columnist Manolo Quezon, it is an online archive of the personal diaries of historical actors, enabling us to piece together significant events in history.

Among the diaries in that collection is that of Francis Burton Harrison, a former American governor general who served as an adviser to the Commonwealth government. Manolo tells us where Harrison was coming from: “[H]e was a longtime resident of the United Kingdom and was thus attuned both to British psychology and their reliance on railways, in contrast to the American preference for highways.”

In Harrison’s Feb. 18, 1936 entry, he wrote that President Quezon has been reported by a newspaper to be weighing on the options of whether to build roads or build railtracks in Mindanao. On April 28, 1936, Harrison wrote: “The President is set on building railways in Mindanao.”

On May 8, 1936, Harrison noted the press interview Quezon gave to foreign and local reporters: “The President contemplates the construction of an electric railway between Davao and Cagayan de Oro. The Maria Cristina Falls in Lanao are to be used for part of the power for the first project.”

There were clashes of opinions, Harrison recorded. An American adviser on public works thought a Mindanao railway would be expensive to maintain and operate, more than roads would require.

On June 6, 1936, Quezon visited Mindanao. At the wharf in Iligan, he said “an electric railway was to be built from Misamis via Bukidnon to Davao, the water power for this project coming from the falls in Lanao.”

To cut the story short, the dream for a Mindanao railroad, set against the backdrop of tremendous losses from the railroad operations in Luzon, failed to gather legislative support. Other advisers were also riveted on the prospect of roads, instead of railroads, boosting the market for US-made automobiles.

A long interval followed that brief attempt at putting together a Mindanao railway. Two years ago, the National Economic and Development Authority announced it had approved the feasibility study for the proposed Mindanao Railway Project from Cagayan de Oro to Davao.

Today, the project has become Lilliputian. The proposed line runs from Digos City in Davao del Sur to Tagum City in Davao del Norte, via Davao City. Take note: Digos to Tagum is not a Mindanao line—it is a local line that would be best served by a metro Davao MRT system.

The center of Mindanao is not Davao. An imperial center is a center that creates margins. A geographical center is a nexus, a hub that is accessible to all its spokes.

Mindanao’s geographical heart is Bukidnon and its coastal access of northern Mindanao. From that vantage point, one reaches by land Zamboanga and Dipolog cities, Surigao City in the east, and the entire southern Mindanao. Buses depart Cagayan de Oro daily to all destinations that can be served by a railway line.

On the other hand, there are no trips from Davao City’s bus terminal to the Zamboanga peninsula. Its farthest destination to the north is Cagayan de Oro. No lines serve the cities of Iligan, Marawi, Ozamiz, Pagadian, Oroquieta, Dipolog and Zamboanga. It is a local terminal, not an insular hub. A railroad terminal should be insular.

The Neda plan of 2015 remains the most pragmatic response to Mindanao’s geographical reality.