Rizal took a train to the province. We can’t.

Could it really be possible that Filipinos had better transportation more than 130 years ago? Jose Rizal did something many of us cannot do today: leave Manila, enter a railway station and take a train north to Central Luzon.

In June 1892, Rizal visited San Fernando, Pampanga, as part of his effort to recruit members for La Liga Filipina. The town’s railway station had opened only months earlier, on 23 February, as part of the Manila–Dagupan system.

Malolos likewise remembers Rizal alighting at its station that year. In the decades that followed, the railway network eventually stretched from La Union in the north to Legazpi in the south.

It is easy to think of this as quaint history until we look at how technology and infrastructure have advanced since then. Eleven years later, the Wright brothers flew. In 1969, humans landed on the Moon. Eventually came satellites, the internet, smartphones, GPS and artificial intelligence. Yet in 2026, there is still no regular passenger train that allows someone to simply leave Metro Manila and continue north through Bulacan and Pampanga.

At its height, railway stations became part of the geography of Central Luzon. San Fernando’s city government credits the arrival of the railway with helping accelerate the town’s growth during Pampanga’s sugar boom. The tracks moved people and goods, but they also changed the meaning of distance. Towns once separated by long journeys became connected to the same network.

For decades, the railway remained part of everyday life in Luzon. Older generations still remember trains regularly passing through towns in Bulacan and Pampanga. Over time, however, the network contracted. Some PNR services continued elsewhere, particularly south of Manila and in Bicol, but the northern passenger connection gradually disappeared.

Imagine how ordinary life might feel if dependable intercity rail had simply continued to evolve over the past century. Visiting grandparents in Pampanga might be an easy afternoon rather than a journey planned around traffic. A weekend in the mountains of Tarlac or the beaches of La Union could begin with a train ride instead of hours stuck in NLEX. Students studying in Manila could return home more often. Families might choose to live in Bulacan or Pampanga without feeling disconnected from opportunities in the capital.

Railways make places feel closer together and therefore they allow businesses to locate beyond major cities and encourage families to settle farther from crowded urban centers. It makes decentralization a practical reality rather than simply a planning objective.

That is why the North-South Commuter Railway matters beyond transportation. The 147-kilometer line now under construction will connect Clark, Metro Manila and Calamba while carrying around 800,000 passengers each day. Journeys between Clark and Makati are projected to take less than an hour.

The benefits extend beyond convenience. According to the Asian Development Bank, residents living near stations could gain access to roughly 300,000 additional jobs within a one-hour commute. Better rail does not simply move people faster; it expands where they can realistically live, work and invest.

More than 130 years after Rizal boarded a train for the province, we are once again building a railway that promises to make the regions of Luzon feel closer together. If history has taught us anything, it is that building infrastructure is only the first step. Preserving it for the generations that follow appears to be the greater challenge.