Buses as Bullets

I’ve said it more than once before, and I’ll say it again. The boundary system that is currently in place for our public utility buses does not work. The system promotes recklessness and consequently makes the streets we all share unsafe (to say the least). We need to overhaul the system for the greater good – and we need to do it now.

Last October 21, Doctor Francisco Sarabia, Jr. met a grisly death exactly because of the flawed system. Sarabia was minding his own business when the car he was driving burst into flames after it was hit from the rear by a Joanna Jesh Transport bus. Witnesses say that the bus was overspeeding, literally racing to the next bus stop in order to get first dibs on would be passengers who would have taken a bus with a similar route were that bus to get to the bus stop first. The impact was apparently so strong that Sarabia was knocked unconscious and consequently trapped, making it impossible for rescuers to pull him out of the burning vehicle. Thankfully, his lone passenger was rescued in time.

While the sad truth is that it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to point out what should already be painfully obvious, it would be best to use the unfortunate incident as a jump off point to a better end. Sarabia is not the first victim of a road mishap directly resulting from public utility drivers attempting to circumvent the boundary system, but it would be good if he were the last. In the context of the boundary system, public utility drivers are tasked to bring in as many passengers as possible given a fixed route. They only start “earning” their keep once they go past a boundary or quota. Given this scenario, it’s easy to see how the mayhem in our streets germinates.

Arm anyone who’s desperate to feed his family with a bullet the size of a bus and he’ll gladly use it. No, I am not accusing our public utility drivers of gross misuse and negligence. I’m only trying to give perspective. Unless they are absolute poor excuses for human beings, no one will purposely cause accidents that may harm other people. But if racing to the next bus stop is what it takes to guarantee the next meal, then that’s what any father would do. The risk of causing another ill is one they’ll readily take.

Which brings me back to my point. Why in the world are we settling for this kind of twisted abuse of cheap labor? Isn’t it bad enough that we settle for second hand scrap buses that pose as brand new vehicles time and again? Must we also subject our drivers to systems that force them to become unruly, passenger hungry, single-minded androids? The system that is in place forces our public utility drivers to drive like possessed zombies, literally making them hungry for more. It forces them to overtake each other at every chance. It forces them to make unsound decisions, like going out onto the lanes provided strictly for private passenger vehicles. It forces them to stay insane lengths in bus stops just so they can fill up their vehicles and earn their keep. It forces them to cause bottlenecks and accidents.

The solution is actually quite simple. But just like any simple solution, we tend to cloud it all in red tape.

The simplest solution would be two-fold. First, trim down the service providers to only those genuinely capable of providing good training to their staff and good service to their clientele. Weed out the unworthy, so to speak. A public utility vehicle service provider should only give the paying public that which is best, after all. Second, require operators to pay their employees a competitive, fixed rate so that they aren’t forced to go crazy trying to make ends meet. In other words, don’t scrimp on the labor. Pay those physically and mentally prepared for the job the kind of wages that they deserve. Give us quantity over quality. Less vehicles out on the road with more efficient practices and procedures? That’d be like manna from heaven, EDSA style.

Like I mentioned earlier, though, all that is easier said than done. As it is, the LTFRB already has its hands full simply trying to appease the rowdy bus operators from paralyzing the streets whenever they ask for fare hikes. Imagine the amount of hell they’d raise if some (majority?) of them were forced to close shop because of incompetence? I can almost see the headlines…TROs and lawsuits galore against the LTFRB for imposing “unfair labor practices upon hardworking service providers”.

Also, there’s the problem of poor law enforcement – a weak link in the government bureaucracy that’s always bound to be our Achilles heel. The public utility vehicle operators can always argue that we need first to clean house in the government enforcement department before we go witch-hunting in the private sector. Which would make sense, ideally. But the moment you ask a government law enforcement agency to clean house and rid the streets of unworthy “public servants” is the day you jump onto the chicken and egg bandwagon. Where does it start? And when will it stop before the trickle down factor begins to affect the service provider? Do we clean house at the LTFRB first so that franchising laws are clear and relevant or must the MMDA provide standardized training to its deputized enforcers first so that both laws and law enforcers are aboveboard? Does the LTO have a say in how things in the public utility vehicle sector are run as well? How about the local government units who stand to gain from all the apprehensions “sound laws” would ideally make, what do they stand to gain were a new system set into place? The list is just endless.

At the end of the day, we’ll have to put our foot down somehow. Because the insanity won’t stop until we decide to make it stop. However, if we still don’t agree that the current system is a failure, then we’re screwed. Because until such time, the accidents won’t cease, and the public utility vehicle sector won’t move forward. Consequently, neither will we.

This week we print a rather lengthy but meaty comment from one of our philstar.com bloggers who posted a comment not on last week’s Backseat Driver column, but on Ray Butch Gamboa’s take on LTO Chief Bert Suansing’s comments on public utility drivers having to re-take their driver’s license exams.

This will be difficult to implement as we all know that many so-called professional drivers resort to cheating as a way to pass the exams. I see people copying answers from each other – even payjust to have the solutions to the answers. Let’s have a 100-item test instead of a short quiz. Maybe we can add a requirement of at least 24 hours of theoretical lectures and at least 3 hours of practical driving to be certified by a private driving school. Special lectures must be added for drivers of public transportation vehicles, motorcycles and trucks. The LTO will merely be a regulatory body overseeing the implementation of drivers’ education program by private sector. If graduates of a driving institution are frequently involved in traffic violations and accidents then the LTO should revoke its license to teach driving. Of course this will not end corruption and bad drivers but at least we are upgrading our drivers’ education program before they get their licenses. – rpalabado

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