Every morning, Emerald Ridon rides the LRT at the Balintawak Station in Quezon City to the Pedro Gil Station in Manila in going to her college, St. Paul University Manila. At the end of the day, she rides the Marcos-era railway again to return to her home in suburban Quezon City.

According to the mass communications freshman, she spends more than one-fourth of her daily two hundred-peso allowance in commuting expenses alone.

Yesterday, Light Rail Transit Authority Chairman Mel Robles announced that the LRTA is planning to increase the rates of both LRT I and II in order to recover massive operations losses such as foreign exchange fluctuations among others.

Like many students who ride the LRT everyday in going to school, she said she opposes any moves to increase the rates and expressed concern that students and their parents would be severely burdened by the rate increases.

Her brother, Terry, UP Law student and chairperson of the militant League of Filipino Students supports his sister in opposing any rate increases in LRT I and II.

“Instead of burdening students and working people further by increasing its rates, the LRTA should petition government to increase subsidies to the LRTs and the MRT. Mass transit is a public service offered by the government, and must remain to be so. We shouldn’t be made to pay more to avail of a service that is funded in the most part by taxpayers’ money.”

Ridon said that commuting expenses are included in the mounting cost of education in the country, aside from yearly tuition and other fee increases, expensive textbooks and board and lodging.

He also said that it is the government’s obligation to subsidize the LRT and the MRT, especially at a time when the country is facing continuing economic setbacks and costs of education that had more than doubled since the last decade.

The student leader called on the Aquino government to confront the issue squarely and vowed that the LFS will organize mass student protests in the event that the LRTA indeed pushes through with their plan.