MANILA - Holiday commuters will get a bit of relief as the Philippine National Railway deployed on Monday 2 new train sets it bought from Indonesia last year.

The train sets have 3 rail cars each and run on diesel. Each train set has a capacity of 750 passengers and will ply the PNR's FTI-Tutuban and Malabon-FTI routes, the railway operator said.

The new trains are expected to add 18 to 20 more trips per day on the assigned routes.

LOOK: Brand-new Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) railcars of the Philippine National Railways (PNR) now operational. PNR says about 150,000 passengers will benefit from the new trains that will ply the Malabon and FTI route. pic.twitter.com/Vw0C0Llba3

— Angel Movido (@angelmovido) December 16, 2019

The PNR aims to accommodate 13,500 additional passengers daily with the new trains, bringing the total capacity of PNR to 73,500 passengers per day from 60,000, the PNR said.

It only takes 35 minutes for the new trains to travel from the PNR's Dela Rosa Station in Makati to the Tutuban Station in Manila, the railway operator said.

“Today we are gathered here, not only to take a ride on that train, but also to celebrate the transformation that is coming up and coming in, in so far as PNR is concerned,” said Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade who led the inauguration of the new trains.

PNR said the new trains form the first batch of 37 rail cars and 3 locomotives to be delivered to the country, with rest to be shipped by batches in 2020.

Once the new train sets are operational, the PNR said it could increase the number of passengers it serves each day to 140,000 from 60,000 passengers at present.