The Manila Light Rail Transit System, popularly known as the LRT, is a metropolitan rail system serving the Metro Manila area in the Philippines. Although referred to as a light rail system because it originally used light rail vehicles, it is more of a rapid transit (metro) system, such as high passenger throughput, exclusive right-of-way and later use of full metro rolling stock. The LRT is operated by the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA), a government-owned and controlled corporation under the authority of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC). Along with the Manila Metro Rail Transit System (MRT-3, also called the Blue Line), and the Philippine National Railways (PNR), the LRT is part of Metro Manila's rail transportation infrastructure known as the Strong Republic Transit System (SRTS).
Quick and inexpensive to ride, the LRT serves 605,000 passengers each day. Its 31 stations along over 31 kilometers (19 mi) of mostly elevated track form two lines. LRT Line 1, also called the Yellow Line, opened in 1984 and travels a north–south route. MRT Line 2, the Purple Line, was completed in 2004 and runs east–west. The original LRT Line 1 was built as a no-frills means of public transport and lacks some features and comforts, but the new MRT Line 2 has been built with additional standards and criteria in mind like barrier-free access. Security guards at each station conduct inspections and provide assistance. A reusable plastic magnetic ticketing system has replaced the previous token-based system, and the Flash Pass introduced as a step towards a more integrated transportation system.
Many passengers who ride the LRT also take various forms of road-based public transport, such as buses, to and from a LRT station to reach their intended destination. Although it aims to reduce traffic congestion and travel times in the metropolis, the transportation system has only been partially successful due to the rising number of motor vehicles and rapid urbanization. The network's expansion is set on tackling this problem.
Read more about Manila Light Rail Transit System: Network, Stations, Rolling Stock, Safety and Security, Fares, History, Future Expansion
Famous quotes containing the words light, rail, transit and/or system:
“Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures; who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 3:20-22.
“We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“In a universe that is all gradations of matter, from gross to fine to finer, so that we end up with everything we are composed of in a lattice, a grid, a mesh, a mist, where particles or movements so small we cannot observe them are held in a strict and accurate web, that is nevertheless nonexistent to the eyes we use for ordinary living—in this system of fine and finer, where then is the substance of a thought?”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)