Is it goodbye jeepney?
My earliest recollection of the jeepney takes me back to the early 1960s, to my hometown of Mandaue City, where it provided the main mode of an eight-kilometer commute to and from Cebu City. There were so few jeepneys then that kids my age can memorize the names of the drivers. In fact I can recall three -Dolo, Sidok, and Ope. If it could be helped, we did not take Ope because he drove so slow, giving rise to the joke that his tires often gathered ants.
Mandaue City in the early 1960s was still so peaceful and quiet you can tell the type of jeepney from probably a kilometer away by the sound its engine made. And you know who was driving. If it was Ope, you had time to go into a number of rituals of pretense to make it appear you are not waiting for a ride. Ope drove a jeepney converted from an Austin van. There were jeepneys tinkered out of Ford Thames vans as well. But most were original Philippine brands like Sarao and Francisco.
Virtually all jeepneys go through Carbon Market. That was their sort of terminal. Before Colon suddenly perked up in the late 1960s, it was through Magallanes that jeepneys from Mandaue passed on their way to Carbon. Magallanes was the hub of commerce before Colon. The earliest I can recall of the jeepney fare from Mandaue to Carbon was 10 centavos. That can give you an idea of how inflation has changed lives. If you went to school with one peso in your pocket, you felt filthy rich.
Travel within the city proper of Cebu was hassle-free. City jeepneys took passengers virtually door-to-door. If, say, you take a Capitol-bound jeepney from Carbon and you wanted to be dropped at Chong Hua, the jeepney will take you there at no added cost. People in those days had no need for taxis. People only took taxis if a wife was about to give birth or someone was going to the airport in Lahug with a fair amount of luggage.
Automated electronic traffic lighting systems had not made their way to the Philippines at the time. Manual signals sufficed, either by a policeman with his hands, or the closest semblance to automation then -two planks of wood colored green and red, crossed and mounted on an iron pole with a handle and operated by a cop. On the green was painted the word GO, on the red STOP. The cop would turn the planks as desired using the pole handle to direct the flow of traffic.
The first real indication that change was transforming the jeepney came not with its increase in number but in the installation on some of car stereos. This came about in the early 1970s. As more and more children came of age to enter high school and college and began taking rides on their own, the stereo became the main attraction for this growing new generation of the riding public. Soon this sector would start selecting their rides based on the "sounds" particular jeepneys offered.
Eventually these stereos became a nuisance. In the hands of jeepney drivers and operators who knew nothing about music, "sounds" became a matter of which bass boomed the loudest or which tweeter shrieked the shrillest. Thankfully the government stepped in and banned stereos altogether. But with population exploding, jeepneys multiplied exponentially. Pretty soon it became clear the demand for transport could not be met. The jeepney thus became an indispensable necessity.
This became the root of everything that went wrong with it later. The need made it possible to welcome anyone wanting to become a driver, including those who have no inkling whatsoever of the responsibilities driving entails. The need became more important than those who filled it and bribes made sure no one bothered with the difference. Everything became a matter of exploiting an insatiable need and damn what man or law stood in the way.
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