Local mobility and accessibility

The recent dysfunction of provincial buses going into and out of Metro Manila last week is a perfect example of how the government oftentimes mismanages public service by sheer absence of coordination. The government’s goal was for the provincial buses to use identified terminal exchanges, but the bus companies want to use their own private terminals. MMDA decreed that the buses can only do so from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. So, the bus companies limited their operations to that time slot. It’s the riding public who ultimately suffered. The LTFRB responded that they were not informed. One may ask, why didn’t they talk in the first place --it’s the same government!

The reality is that this is reflective of the current state of our governance as far as public transportation is concerned, and this is not limited only to Metro Manila but is happening in all cities and municipalities, in varying degrees of dysfunction. Not so much in inter-city or inter-municipality routes but more so within towns or cities, especially the bigger ones. Who sets the routes? Who determines the operational parameters? By default, this falls to the LTFRB since it decides and issues the franchises. But that is a reactive and not a pro-active responsibility since it cannot issue a franchise unless someone applies for one.

The Land Public Transport Route Plan was supposed to cure this deficiency. It was such a much-celebrated proposal that the government has required all LGUs to prepare one, forgetting that out of the 1,600++ LGUs in the country, less than 200 have public utility vehicles (PUVs) with routes within them, majority had only routes between them. The bulk of local mobility utilizes tricycles and habal-habals.

Again, who determines the form and manner of local public transportation --routes, vehicle sizes, hours of operations, terminals, if any, etc.? Who determines how many units are allotted to a route and approve route changes, if any? LTFRB is a regulatory body and simply approves and issues franchises in accordance with its charter; it cannot plan the mobility needs of a local government. The LGU is supposed to know that and plan, with deep emphasis on the demand culled out from its Comprehensive Land Use Plan, if it has any. In the past, in Cebu City, this was complied with through the issuance of a “travel line” issued by Citom. At the very least, Citom had the competence to determine the demand for existing routes as well as the need for new routes because it had fully-trained personnel to do so.

The terminal points, another story (and thorn), was determined by the Terminal Accreditation Committee. We still don’t know if this is still active or not, but this is essential to harmonize inter-city routes and intra-city routes. But key to all these is the proper coordination of all parts of government, something which is missing in the case of LTFRB and MMDA. In the case of Metro Cebu, what is notably missing is the analyses of vehicle capacity and corresponding mix. This task falls squarely on the Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) which unfortunately is more concerned with traffic enforcement and apprehending illegal parking.