I took a train ride recently on the commuter Metrotren from Tayuman Station in Manila to Sucat on the outskirts of our megacity. It was slow, dangerous, and dirty. But thousands still ride the train daily because it is cheaper than jeepneys and buses, and if you're bringing merchandise like fruits to market, there's more space.

The current imbroglio about the North Rail project, which the mainland Chinese contractor has yet to start, has made many overlook that we already have a South Rail line all the way to Bicol, the famous Bicol Express from Manila to Legaspi. The Philippine National Railroad, the government corporation that runs our oldest rail line (of course we also have the newer, elevated and more expensive MRT and LRT lines in Metro Manila), is so in the red that it stopped making payments to the GSIS years ago without even informing its employees (a group of them told me so).

Most of that Bicol Express trip is uneventful (except for the deadly derailing in Quezon province earlier this year because of stolen rail spikes). But the journey through Manila is like riding into war. The railroad tracks cut through some of the densest urban communities in the country. Irritated by their broken sleep or interrupted card games on the tracks, local toughies pelt the train with anything within reach. I was shooting (my camera) from the front of the train when I got hit by a piece of wood. I was lucky.


A conductor sees the track ahead through glass cracked by a trackside settler with good aim.

Train personnel show scars from rocks. That's why the conductors have screens over the glass windshields. The passenger cars have metal screens too but no glass, so wooden windows are pulled up in certain neighborhoods which are known to harbor shit throwers. Yes, some crazies wait for the train to pass so they can bombard it with poo-poo wrapped in newspapers, otherwise known as "flying saucers."

Others see the train as a convenient garbage disposal system: they throw their bags of garbage onto the moving roof and not have to worry about tardy garbage pick-ups. I-Witness editor JJ Villamarin cracked me up once by feigning garbage envy: "Buti pa basura may libreng byahe sa Bicol." (Lucky garbage, they get to ride to Bicol for free)

Trackside residents nurse a deep grudge against the passing trains, blaming them for the numerous accidents that have occurred along the tracks over the years, even though the railroad was there first. The victims are usually drunks or kids who get in the way of a rumbling behemoth that cannot stop on a dime. But there's also the case of everyone's friend Caloy Abrera, Paolo's dad and Suzi Entrata's father-in-law, a visitor to the tracks in Taguig who was killed while shopping for plants. The din of the neighborhoods can be so loud it's easy to miss the sound of an approaching train or to miscalculate its distance.

I recall Ditsi Carolino's cinema verite Riles, where trackside videoke singers belt out sad songs, oblivious to that choo-choo reminder of their always-pending eviction. That's what has happened recently to tens of thousands of informal settlers along the northern line.



Trains and trackside communities are a fatal mix. But it's yet another consequence of the country's land problem. Many migrants and other poor people just have nowhere else to settle but one of the most perilous places to call home.