Imperative 40: 19th vision: mega co-ops' elevated railways with E85-fueled auxiliary power generators
The sole Philippine ground-level State-run railway company and a State-managed elevated light railway company have been notorious for unbelievable inefficiency and corruption. One recent poverty-maintaining scandal: Rehabilitation of a non-operational hundred-kilometer or so Spanish-era (1890s) ground-level railway line consumed billions of pesos in initial construction costs, advances to suppliers, and transfer payouts to squatters. The money used came from Chinese loans payable by local people's taxes. As with all other major State contracts, million-peso payouts to local politician signatories and their 'facilitators' have been considered by media and knowledgeable people as a 'given'. More bureaucratic cuts were 'most certainly' made (say critics) out of massive payments to relocated squatters and lot title claimants to old railway lands. What were actually built however were just a few pylons for a planned elevated railway line of the Spanish-e