The first morning I left the house at the usual time and reached Baclaran 35 minutes earlier than the bus ever managed. By Friday that gap had shrunk to about twenty minutes, because I had stopped running for the train.
The good
The trains are frequent, the stations are bright and the ride over the coastal road is the best view of Manila Bay you can get for a train fare. Platform doors and lifts make it easy for parents with strollers and older riders.
The not-yet
Getting to the station is the hard part. Tricycles to Dr. Santos charge what they like, and the covered walkways stop short of the main road. On the third day it rained and the last hundred metres were the wettest part of the trip.
Numbers from my week
Door to desk, the bus used to take between 95 minutes and two hours. The train trip, including the tricycle and the walk at the Manila end, settled at about 75 minutes, and the variation dropped to a few minutes either way. That predictability is worth more than the time saved.
The fare is higher than the bus, but the beep card makes transfers quick, and the stations have clean toilets, which nobody who commutes in Manila takes for granted.
On Thursday the train stopped between stations for six minutes with no announcement. Nobody complained much. Six minutes is a good day on the coastal road.
Who rides it
By the end of the week the regulars were easy to spot: office workers heading to Pasay and Makati, students bound for the universities near Taft, and families visiting relatives in Manila on weekends. Vendors had already set up at the foot of the station stairs, selling coffee and pandesal to the early crowd.
The extension still needs better links at the Cavite end: more covered walkways, a proper jeepney stop and lights on the side streets. With those, it could change how a lot of people in the south get to work.
By the end of the week the station had a regular crowd of familiar faces. That is usually the sign a line has become part of the city.
