Delivering early results
Credit to Author: ROBERT SIY| Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2019 16:18:22 +0000
There has been endless chatter in recent weeks about the existence or not of a transport crisis and whether enough is being done. The response from government has been: “We hear your pain; new infrastructure is urgently needed; we are working on many significant projects; life will be better for you in a few years when these projects are completed.”
Commuters are saying: “The situation is getting worse every day and has now become intolerable; many of us are losing six hours a day traveling around the city and travel costs eat a very large part of our take-home pay; if you could experience on a daily basis what we experience, you would be doing much more or doing things differently.”
There are less than three years remaining in the Duterte administration. It would be tragic if commuters see only more suffering at the end of six years, if the promises of a more comfortable life are realized only by succeeding administrations when the big infrastructure projects are completed.
The good news is that there is much that can be done and delivered even in this administration, and some of the most significant results can be achieved within the next two years.
Create networks of protected bicycle lanes. After Sal Panelo embarked on his epic 16-kilometer journey from home to office (3.5 hours using three jeepneys and one motorcycle), a few cyclists decided to see how long it would take them to travel the same route using a bicycle at an easy pace. The result: total moving time of 1 hour 15 minutes at a pace of 10 to 14 kilometers per hour burning 466 calories. With the congestion in Metro Manila, a bicycle can save 2 to 4 hours of travel time every day.
Cycling would attract many more people if there was a network of protected bike lanes around our city. It would increase the carrying capacity of our roads. A lane of road devoted to bicycles can move 5 times more people per hour than a lane of road used for private cars. Some car users would gladly leave their cars at home if bicycles were a safer option.
If each local government in Metro Manila created 10 kilometers of protected bicycle lanes every year for the next three years, Metro Manila would have over 500 kilometers of protected bicycle lanes by the end of the Duterte administration. People would be happier and healthier, and travel times would be more predictable.
Increase the subsidy for replacement of old jeepneys. Today, the government offers only a subsidy of P80,000 for the replacement of an old, unsafe, inefficient, highly polluting jeepney—an amount that seems too small and unreasonable to many jeepney owners who would likely consider their vehicles to be worth much more.
If the subsidy per jeepney were increased to P500,000, the subsidy would require a budget of P100 billion to replace 200,000 units (or P20 billion a year for 5 years). One hundred billion pesos may seem like a lot—but it is not much when we consider the benefits to 40 million passengers a day and many more who breathe the air in our cities; it is not much when we compare the economic loss of P3.5 billion per day in Greater Manila and P1.1 billion per day in Metro Cebu, as estimated in studies financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). It is not much when viewed against the P400 billion investment that the government is making in the Metro Manila Subway that will move about 400,000 passengers per day.
Moreover, a larger subsidy would facilitate a shift to more efficient, higher capacity vehicles on high volume roads. For example, if a route today with 250 jeepneys would be better served by 50 buses, the jeepney operators would form a cooperative that would then become the operator of the 50 buses. If we assume a subsidy of P500,000 per old jeepney surrendered, five old jeepneys could raise a combined subsidy of P2.5 million, more than enough to make a down-payment on a brand new 12-meter bus. Together, the owners of the 250 jeepneys would become shareholders in a cooperative or corporation that would manage and operate 50 buses on the route—delivering better services to commuters and operating with improved profitability and stability.
Lift the number-coding restriction on public transport. We live in a city where the supply of public transport is so limited that people wait over an hour in queues or at bus stops just to catch a ride.
And yet, 20 percent of public transport vehicles—jeepneys, taxis, buses and UV Express vans are deliberately kept off the streets. Over 1,000 buses, over 10,000 jeepneys, over 4,000 taxis and over 2,000 UV Express units are deliberately removed from service daily. This makes no sense.
Lifting the number-coding restriction on public transport would have an immediate positive impact on commuters, enabling them to get to their destinations sooner—without any investment in vehicles or infrastructure. To delay this decision prolongs the suffering of million of Filipinos who rely on public transport.
We need to do more than just the activities in the Build, Build, Build program, many of which will still require several years to complete. The above three actions are some of the near-term measures that can deliver significant, tangible results within the Duterte administration. There is no time to lose. Filipinos deserve better, sooner!
Robert Y. Siy is a development economist, city and regional planner, and public transport advocate. He can be reached at mobilitymatters.ph@yahoo.com or followed on Twitter @RobertRsiy