End of the road

The jeepney is on Philippine postcards and souvenir items – that is, the one painted all over in colorful fiesta motif, made by Sarao or rival Francisco Motors.

Growing up in the city of Manila, I could hop on a jeepney right outside my home and hop out in front of my Catholic school. In my college years, my jeepney ride ended just across the street from the spot where I took the red bus with the roll-up wooden windows to Diliman.

The jeepney was gaudy and dirty, the ride was slow and dusty and largely open to the elements, and the music blaring from many of the vehicles could break my eardrums. But the ride was cheap, readily accessible, and it always brought me to my destination in one piece.

Those considerations were good enough for me, and they remain among the top considerations for the average commuter in Metro Manila. Except that these days, commuters have better options: the light railway services (when they’re not breaking down); commuter trains (if one can squeeze into the cattle cars); air-conditioned buses with TV and for the top of the line, with wi-fi; taxis ranging from the affordable ride-sharing AUVs (P10 minimum fare) to the exclusive Uber/Grab ride-hailing services that charge 10 times the rates on air-conditioned buses. Some shopping malls have also introduced solar-powered shuttles that provide a smooth, quiet ride. Point-to-point buses are also proving to be popular.

So Pinoys are psyched up for bidding goodbye to the ubiquitous jeepney.

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In the first place, it’s no longer the jeepney of our youth. The fiesta paint is indispensable for the image of the jeepney as a cultural icon. The old jeepney was where we got precious Pinoy gems such as “basta driver, sweet lover.” It was like the colorful mini buses in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Today’s jeepney is just a highly polluting jerry-built chassis of plain stainless steel placed over a reconditioned engine, with only the authorized route and registration numbers painted on the sides to prevent trip-cutting and colorum operations. It’s an unattractive contraption with mostly undisciplined drivers behind the wheel who pee against the vehicle tires, with child beggars jumping in to pester passengers.

Phasing out the jeepney, or at least relegating it to secondary roads, has been kicked around for perhaps three decades now. But no president thought the political cost was worth it.

Perhaps under Toughie Rody Duterte, the plan will finally push through.

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The tragedy is that those behind the production of the jeepney could have been given support by the government to rise up the value chain and become major assemblers and producers of original car parts. At its peak from the 1960s, Sarao Motors was said to be churning out up to 10 jeepneys a day at its plant in Las Piñas.

In 1965, we already had what passed for a national car, called the Sakbayan, but it was clearly just a low-end knock-off of the Volkswagen Country Buggy.

Ferdinand Marcos, like his authoritarian contemporaries in Southeast Asia, dreamed of producing a national car, proudly Philippine-made. But his dictatorship must have been sidetracked by many other issues. Malaysia later produced the Proton and Indonesia came out with the Timor. Pinoys found it more convenient to simply buy American, Japanese and, later, Korean vehicles.

Today we’re losing out to several of our Southeast Asian neighbors even in car assembly and the production of parts for foreign manufacturers. Our neighbors have fewer foreign ownership restrictions, more attractive tax incentives, less red tape, lower power costs and more efficient logistics and infrastructure for manufacturing. Our traditional edge, our English-speaking workforce, is slipping as other countries boost their citizens’ skills and English proficiency while at the same time offering lower labor costs, fewer paid holidays and more flexible labor rules.

Our government is moving in the opposite direction, which earns the administration brownie points with workers, but drives away the investors who provide the jobs. Even entrepreneurship is dampened by stringent labor rules and high costs.

Meanwhile, our jeepney makers are left with little more than their nostalgia for the good old days.

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We don’t have an enabling environment for local manufacturing growth. Even for a micro enterprise, just trying to obtain seed financing and getting started can be enough to nip in the bud any aspiration for venturing into manufacturing.

With over 7,100 islands and one of the world’s most extensive coastlines, we could have, for example, developed our own shipbuilding industry, like Japan and South Korea. The Spaniards had set up a shipyard at Sangley Point in Cavite and later in several other areas to service the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. Augustinian chronicler Casimiro Diaz called the ships built in the Philippines during the colonial era as “the best that can be found in the universe.” But we failed to capitalize on this to develop our local shipbuilding industry.

The Philippines is now one of the top 10 countries for shipbuilding, but Filipinos are making the vessels for foreign companies.

Cavite, incidentally, has its own version of the jeepney – more the size of a mini bus – that has retained the look of the traditional ride, with the fiesta paint.

But in Metro Manila, the government phase-out plan looks designed to eliminate the jeepney for good. I was told that you can buy a stainless steel jeepney for less than P300,000. The government wants jeepney operators to buy a modern and eco-friendly version, on installment with money borrowed from the government, but how many can afford P1.4 million to P1.6 million per unit? For that amount, jeepney operators will just buy an AUV and operate a ride-sharing taxi – which is probably what the government wants.

The jeepneys will have to be replaced by buses – preferably double-deckers to maximize space utilization on crowded roads – and efficient light railway and train services.

At least on major thoroughfares, it looks like the end of the road for the jeepney.