Transportation for the masses

Philstar.com posted a Tweet last week about Manolito Palacio who drives his wife from Bagong Silang, Caloocan City all the way to Fairview, Quezon City using a wheel chair attached to a bicycle. Due to lack of public transport, he has to endure an almost 12 km drive back and forth, twice a week.

The 48-year-old father of seven, who has no work due to coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19, said the dialysis his wife needs and the delay of remittance from his 22-year-old son left him no choice. 

Public transportation, already inadequate in better times, became a nightmare for ordinary people who depend on it. Many workers are still unable to go to work even after their workplaces reopened due to lack of public transportation. 

That kasambahay who died on a footbridge in Pasay while waiting for a ride back home to Bicol had to walk from Cubao to Pasay with her belongings. We hear stories of workers walking long distances to make a living in these troubled times.

IATF, DOTr and LTFRB officials have limited public transport even after Metro Manila went into GCQ. The commuter trains and P2P buses on EDSA were the only ones originally allowed to resume operations.

It was only after President Duterte gave an order to activate other bus routes that more feeder routes started to run as well. But the jeepneys are still on hold.

Apparently, transport officials are using the Covid emergency to forcefully implement its jeepney modernization program. The shift is unaffordable to most drivers and operators.

The issue against the jeepneys this time is the passenger seating configuration. It is supposedly conducive to covid infection. 

LTFRB even wants to require jeepney drivers to submit a manifest or list of passengers and their contact particulars. This is supposed to facilitate tracing if eventually necessary.

LTFRB also wants a cashless payment scheme for the jeepneys supposedly to reduce danger of covid infection. While this is feasible, making it a condition for start of jeepney operations is questionable.  

The mass transport system of Metro Manila (and the rest of the country’s) is based on the independent jeepney operators and drivers. Take the jeepneys out and we have a problem. We all see that every time jeepney drivers go on strike. 

What we have now is a reverse strike. Let the drivers and operators agree or they will not run.

Some of my friends in one Viber group had been chewing on this problem, thinking aloud on what could be done. 

One comment: What does it take to convert jeepneys into company-hired shuttle services in a P2P mode? Revise franchises – remove “Not for hire” restrictions? Remove the routing restrictions so they can deliver the employees to the factory/office sites?

Re-configure for social distancing compliance?  Jeepneys can wait in pick up points where company employees can assemble, and “bid” to be hired as one-time shuttle service.

But another responded: That is rational thinking that may not find a fertile ground among regulation-obsessed bureaucrats. Companies could, in fact, hire tourist and school buses/vans made idle by IATF regulations. 

Jeepneys reconfigured physically as social distancing compliant should be allowed to be hired as shuttle vehicles and traverse their own routes. The main hurdle is that most of the industries are SMEs that cannot afford to hire jeepneys. 

Why not make passengers pay so long as the ride is made available in certain pick-up points?

The other social dimension of the problem is, what about all these out of work jeepney drivers? Many have even invested earnings from working abroad. Katas ng Saudi is proudly painted on the jeepney sides.

The Duterte administration shows lack of empathy with the plight of the jeepney drivers, one social media post asserts. “The government is talking about stimulus packages for big business as sour jeepney drivers are forced to beg on the streets so they can feed their families.”

Addressing the plight of out-of-work jeepney drivers, QC had a bright idea: hire jeepneys into freight deliveries to supplement motorcycles. I saw a social media post showing a large sticker of Lalamove on a jeepney. Expect LTFRB to object.

One friend sent me this message: “Boo. Just talked to Doy Vea. They are testing e-payment for taxis, using pasaload template. Passenger pays to the driver’s e-wallet via cellphone. Can be ported to jeepneys and other public transport modes later. 

“Old jeepneys with higher ceilings should have lower risk – wind ventilation dissipates viral droplets and reduce time within vehicles. Plastic separators in the middle as barrier to face-to-face seating was suggested before. 

“You can add the standard health protocols, but the most important variable is fare adjustment. Grant jeepney a fare adjustment to a flat fare of P10 or P15 regardless of distance – to compensate for 50 percent load and simplify payments.

“There is another LTFRB barrier: new set of jeepney routes. Restructuring routes initiated more than two years ago is still incomplete. 

“The one for buses was completed (without stress test), and adopted in permitting buses to re-open. It would be contradictory for LTFRB/DoTr to get the jeepneys back on old routes and deviating from new conditions imposed on buses.

“The 50 percent limit might be justified on health grounds, but a simultaneous cutback in number of units (from about 8,000 to 4,000 buses) is not as that would imply double contraction in supply.”

The observation had been made that “the longer the jeepneys are not allowed to ply the roads, the more you realize how incompetent the government is. You cannot shut down the economy forever, and a critical part of the economy is public transport.”

The public transport problem already got Duterte’s ire a few weeks ago. Let us see if that has any effect on his clueless transport officials.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco