Curves vs corners mentality

There is an image on Facebook that models how engineers think versus how ordinary people behave. The photo was an overhead view of a corner where engineers designed the usual L shape concrete walkway for people to turn. However, people took short cuts and made a path across the grass, slicing off some distance and making the turn faster. The same thing can be observed in many street corners in Metro Manila where engineers and planners “force” drivers to take wider turns when turning right into corners. In many gas stations, drivers take a short cut instead. Some smarter engineers have started to realize that if the corner was sliced or cut into a curve, vehicles could seamlessly turn into the corner without risk or creating obstruction.

I use these examples as means of showing how the DOTr and the LTFRB have insisted on imposing their will on provincial buses by hook or by crook even if it shows utter lack of logic, common sense and is ultimately Anti-Business and Anti-Poor. After causing serious inconvenience and hardship to provincial commuters, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board added insult to injury last week by sending out “show cause orders” to provincial bus companies who did not field buses in order to avoid getting tickets or having their buses impounded for violating the MMDA ban on provincial buses on EDSA after 5 am up to 10 pm. In the eyes of the DOTr and the LTFRB, the bus companies were violating their franchise for not using or refusing to use the government built sponsored bus terminal in Bocaue, Bulacan near the Philippine Arena and for not fielding buses outside the MMDA window hours.

In the first place during the pre-COVID years, there was already very strong opposition to the Bocaue Terminal from the beginning because most provincial bus companies already spent millions of pesos to buy or lease very expensive property along EDSA and spent several millions more to construct bus terminals. Building permits were given, business permits were issued, and no opposition from city or MMDA planners were expressed until after the terminals had long been operational. Succeeding suggestions to shut down the terminals were based on flimsy generalizations, such as how the buses entering and leaving the terminals were causing traffic jams, but even those claims were promptly addressed by operators through the nose in-nose out policy for buses. Even provincial commuters were opposed to the added distance and transfers because a big number of “provincial commuters” actually work in Metro Manila’s commercial and business districts but live in nearby provinces such as Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Pampanga who prefer to get off at EDSA terminals where they have a shorter commute to their office and where taxis and commuter vans are plenty.

When reporters from a couple of TV stations decided to experience the “customers’ pain” they discovered that many commuters were not aware of the MMDA ban on provincial buses. Any thinking individual with half a brain would have known that the “Jekyll and Hyde” policy involving the use of two different terminal facilities during two different hours of the day and night was guaranteed to confuse many commuters – as it did. Many preferred to board at the EDSA terminals because there were already existing transfers that have evolved through the years, compared to going to the Bocaue Terminal which involved at least two additional transfers and more expense to travelers who had very limited budgets.

The window hours from 10 pm to 5 am is also very inconvenient, difficult and risk prone. Provincial travelers can board buses in EDSA terminals only after 10 pm outbound. Those coming from the provinces must arrive in Metro Manila for work before 5 am. Getting cabs or vans to transport boxes and baggage at night can be very hard, not to mention dangerous due to the increased petty crimes in the NCR. Depending on your destination northbound, you will arrive anywhere from midnight to 4 am. I regularly take Victory Liner to Baguio City and once we took the bus that left at around midnight and we reached Baguio at 4:30 in the morning. Hotels don’t allow check-in until around 11 or 12 usually, so we had to find a café to hang out for half a day! But pity travelers who end up in other provincial destinations at 2 or 3 in the morning! It gets worse for office workers and blue collared workers riding into town and having to make “tambay” six days a week or a total of half a day waiting for work to begin!

There is something very wrong and suspicious in how the DOTr and LTFRB demand and insist on making people use a bus terminal that was not popular, not accepted and cost a lot of money and is now slowly becoming a “White Elephant” facing extinction. When the media started highlighting many people stranded at bus terminals, wasting the entire day and missing meals because they only had bus fare, the DOTr sent out free rides to the Bocaue terminal. Unfortunately for them, a reporter and his camera crew did a story on the free ride and reported how their ride drove through inner streets, apparently avoiding toll roads, and eventually took two hours from point to point.

Counter to these, other drivers have pointed out that the government has now taken away their livelihood by giving free rides! The government spends money it does not have to build a terminal it does not need, forces and threatens bus operators to patronize a terminal that will only add to their costs, travel time and fuel consumption and render their multi-million terminals useless. Worst of all, the DOTr and LTFRB are placing physical and financial burdens on poor people or those with very limited finances.

Why force the issue at the people’s expense? Who is benefitting from all this? Definitely not “probinsyanos.”