By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr.
WASHINGTON, DC — It’s my first time to land at Washington Dulles International Airport from Manila via Seoul-Incheon airport. The two previous times (2004 and 2009) that I went to Washington DC, I landed at Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport.
From Dulles to Washington DC proper, I took the bus-rail combination. It is safe, convenient and cheap, only $10 or about 1/6 of the taxi or Uber fare here; travel time for this combo is about one hour. When I went to Kuala Lumpur in May, I also took the train-bus combo from KL International Airport (KLIA) to my hotel in KL city center. Bus fare from KLIA to KL Sentral is about 12 ringgit or 1/3 of Ekspress train.
Metro rails are good complements to international airports. Metro Manila has one of the shortest rail network among developed and developing Asia, we need to have more.
The development and expansion of trains from international airports and seaports to and from Metro Manila was not covered by President Rodrigo R. Duterte in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2019 on Monday. Congress leaders should prioritize these.
