By Lorenz S. Marasigan & Recto Mercene

ADOPTING a twin-airport policy—one in the north and another in the south—is the most beneficial strategy that the government can undertake, an official from a party that offered to build a new international gateway in Sangley, Cavite, said on Thursday.

All-Asia Resources and Reclamation Corp. (ARRC) Vice President Edmund Lim said the government and the public stand to benefit the most when such a policy has been put in place.

He said the country should have two international gateway airports—one in Sangley and another in Clark—for public convenience and to cope with demand growth in the future.

“These two are strategically located to serve the northern and southern parts of Luzon. Those in Metro Manila can choose which one is more convenient to them, which will also help ease traffic,” he said.

Washington, D.C., model

Former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo backed the dual-airport proposal system for the Philippines, much like what the former government official saw in Washington, D.C., where he lived for 10 years as a student.

He said under a dual airport system, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport  (Naia) Terminal  1 would be gradually phased out and Naia 2 would be converted into a domestic terminal, while Naia 3 remains as an interim international airport.

On the other hand, de Ocampo said the government should construct a modular terminal in Clark, which would be built as a tourism hub “and finally move there while Naia 2 and Naia 3 evolve as a combination of domestic airport and terminal for flights by Philippine Airlines and others.”

De Ocampo said Thailand and Vietnam have modern airports, and “I can go on and on and on…and [that] I’m sure it has not escaped the notice of our leaders, political and otherwise, that time and time again, we found ourselves [amid] airports [that have gone] from bad to worse. In short, we’ve known this for such a long time and the time has come for us to do something about it.”

He added a dual-airport system combining the Naia with Clark “is the logic behind the Dulles and Reagan airports in Washington, D.C.”

“Those that are far away land in Dulles and some flights that are more or less nearby also land in Reagan,” he said during a conference at the Asian Institute of Management, sponsored by the Arangkada Philippines and the Joint Chambers of Commerce in the Philippines (JCCP). The two groups forwarded an Air Transport Infrastructure Policy Brief that offers recommendations to address key issues, which hinder the Philippines from becoming the preferred investment destination for air transport and tourism.

Sangley airport push

Lim added that an international airport in Sangley can be up and running in four to five years’ time after the government gives a notice to proceed.

“It will be built by our company in partnership with foreign partners without the need for a single cent from the government. We have already signed all the contracts to make this happen. We are ready, but we need the government to give its nod,” he said.

Clark, he added, only needs to be upgraded and “perhaps be the one whose operations and maintenance should be privatized.”

The government had planned to bid out the operations and maintenance contract of the Naia, but has shelved the plan in the meantime.

The Naia has two intersecting runways and limited space for expansion, especially for a new parallel runway.

“We can have two airports we can be proud of, not just one. Clark is underutilized because it really needs to have a new terminal and infrastructure for easy access. It is the one that must be privatized, not the Naia,” Lim said.

Some of the recommended reforms include decongesting and improving the Naia; implementing a multi-airport system policy in the greater capital region and accelerating the development of Clark; accelerating the development of secondary international gateways and provincial airports; modernizing and strengthening institutions and regulations (such as the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, creation of a national transportation safety board, etc.); and improving the business environment and facilitating travel (i.e., lower application fees, provision of CIQs or Customs, immigration quarantine at international airports, among others).

Air transport stimulates economic growth, generating almost 1.44 million jobs in the Philippines, and increasing the GDP by $9.8 billion, including benefits to the tourism sector.

Railway link  

“Twenty-one years have passed and we’ve spent a lot of money and a lot of time for consultants to say something that I said without getting paid,” de Ocampo said partly in jest, adding the idea of a dual airport system was originally proposed during the administration of former President Fidel V. Ramos.

But how do you transfer from Clark to Manila? A common question among many Filipinos, which he answers: “Of course, you build a railway.”

Another persistent question that de Ocampo also answered is the expense of building a railway.

“You can either look at it as an expense or you can look at it as an investment,” the finance expert said. He added that other countries have done the same thing “for their great benefit”.

According to de Ocampo, localities surrounding airports could develop “to such an extent that it expands the tax base if you are thinking of where you are going to get the money and, at the same time,  provide opportunities for employment [since] expands the development of the area by quantum leaps.”

De Ocampo proposed the construction of a medium-speed rail between Manila and Clark. “We ’re not even aiming for a bullet train, but a medium-speed [train system].”

‘Convoluted’ 

He, however, junked the idea of using the existing Philippine National Railways (PNR) right-of-way in Central Luzon “because it is convoluted, [and] it passes through highly dense populated areas and you end up chugging along at the speed of a PNR train at 40 kph.”

De Ocampo, who was named Finance Minister of the Year by several organizations and was chairman and CEO of the Development Bank of the Philippines in 1989, said we should not be talking of just about airports or transportation. “But if you look at it as only about airports and look at it as only about traffic, you may just miss the bigger picture.”

“This is about urban congestion and our chance in a lifetime to solve it to enable to disperse the city outward and to create a new megalopolis that would be the main magnet of economic activity for the rest of the nation. You simply had to disperse the city outward,” he said.

He said London did it back in the 19th century, when it was facing the same problem with traffic gridlocks.

Source: http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/build-sangley-clark-railway-link/