Habal-habal Part 4 - Breaking the impasse

At the end of the day, the singular determinant on the habal-habal issue is legal in nature, and government is left with no recourse but to address it squarely. That the operations of these two-wheelers-for-hire is illegal is not up for debate -there is no existing legal framework for them. Can we stop their operations all over the country? My personal opinion is no, unless we want to render huge swathes of areas virtually inaccessible and remove the livelihood of millions of Filipinos. Modus vivendi.

The current debate, absent in previous years, is a result of the perennial urban-rural dichotomy. Habal-habal is illegal but we can't stop its operations because in many rural areas in the country, it is the only viable mode of transportation, both for people, their produce, and means of living. But the "accessibility" reasoning for its continued existence has already transcended to the urban areas where traffic congestion has made certain "areas" or "routes" inaccessible. Note that inaccessibility can be physical, economic, or time-based, or any combination of the three. Even when certain areas are physically connected and economically viable for other modes of transport, excessive congestion has made travel time untenable -travelling five hours to work and back daily is simply unacceptable, and I might say, "inhumane."

Thus, government has no recourse but to allow its operations and impose stringent regulations. During the 10th Regional Environmentally Sustainable Transportation Forum in Asia, in Vientiane, Lao PDR last year, the forum passed the Vientiane Declaration on Sustainable Rural Transport towards Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This also recognized the important contribution of two-wheelers in national development. While this focused on rural transport, we cannot divorce its contribution to urban transport and the need to regulate the same. This is where the proposed legislation in Congress is of paramount importance, cause it is not simply a matter of legalization, there is also the need to modernize the system to keep up with the times and make it not only safe, but easy, efficient, and user-friendly.

Beyond that, we ought to start discussing the role of two-wheelers in the first-mile/last-mile connectivity in cities, considering the Filipino's penchant for door-to-door service. It might take decades for us to remove this cultural difficulty, and two-wheelers are one of the good options to connect the residence to the mass transport system. We always wail about mass transport nowadays, forgetting the fact that it actually does not bring us to our doorstep. It would be some time before mass transport service will saturate our cities, and last-leg transport is currently provided by tricycles and trisikads. Rain is a major factor, of course, but we should welcome as many options as possible. And traffic managers should always consider the different contributions to congestion all the options have.

The next arena for discussion will probably be the propulsion mechanisms. Do we upgrade fuel type regulations? Do encourage electric motorcycles? What are the emissions effects of motorcycles? How do we prevent lead contamination from engine batteries? These are the next battlegrounds.