Mindanao Railway Project Route and Time

One of the big projects of President Duterte will be the Mindanao Railway which is the Phase 1 of Mindanao railway will start by next year.

How near are the cities from each other after Mindanao Railway Project has been completed? Should the train run on average speed at 100 km per hour, almost half of the travel time can be cut relative to the traditional bus travel.

The speed provided is neither of a high-speed train nor of a bullet train. If we’re lucky to have a high-speed train, which doesn’t exist yet, in the country, then we will have more travel time to cut. Davao to CDO may go 1 hour and a half, travelling from Gensan to davao may go for less an hour, and CDO to Iligan may run only for 30 minutes. High-speed train runs more than 200 kilometer per hour.

As for the number of trains that will run per day, there is no announcement yet has been made but according to the publicized Regional Framework Plan by each region, the project will have single and double track railway. As to who would manage the train, no bidding has been made yet. Usually this kind of project is done thru Build-Operate-Transfer. Who would win the bid will operate the railway for a definite amount of time. As of recently, interested bidders are firms from China, Indonesia, Japan, and Malaysia. San Miguel Corp and Ayala are also eyed as developers. As for the power requirements, we do not have enough data on the capacity of Mindanao to operate this train.