Public transport emergency
ROBERT SIY
Just observe any major road or transport terminal in Metro Manila during rush hour and you’ll find many people waiting, often for hours, just to get a ride not knowing when they can find a place on a bus or jeepney.
It’s a cruel reality for most commuters. Any government that cares for its citizens can’t be blind to emergency that’s all around us.
There may have been a time when oversupply of public transport vehicles existed in Metro Manila. Such is no longer the case. How did the public transport shortage come about?
First, the urban population grew by at least two-three percent annually over the past 20 years. Filipinos continue to flock cities. Few people know it but the population density of Metro Manila (estimated at 232 persons per hectare in 2015) now exceeds that of places like Seoul (170 persons per hectare) or Tokyo (131 persons per hectare).
The number of private motor vehicles grows daily but “authorized” number of public transport vehicles didn’t go up in over 10 years, except for minor increases in new services such as P2P buses. (Any increases in public transport supply have actually come from colorum transport operators which have responded to supply deficits.)
At the same time, traffic on major roads moves at less than five kilometers per hour during rush hour. Much faster to walk or jog home as Drew Arellano demonstrated on EDSA a few weeks ago.
Previously, an EDSA city bus could make six or more round trips a day.
They are now struggling to make even three round trips a day. This means that each bus now carries, over the course of a day, fewer passengers than they used to. Over the past 20 years, capacity of the transport fleet has been halved while demand nearly doubled.
The situation with road-based public transport in Metro Manila is exacerbated by reduction in the capacity of MRT3. At its peak, MRT3 carried over 600,000 passengers per day. Today, with fewer train sets and slower train speeds, the daily passenger volume is less than 400,000 passengers.
With thousands of commuters “stranded” daily (with very long waiting times to get a ride), it’s already a major crisis. Imagine the productivity loss and health consequences of our work force spending more than four hours a day in a stressful commute and compensating for this wasted time by depriving themselves of sleep.
To this daily economic cost of lost productive time, we should also add the waste of human capital when skilled and competent staff decline good jobs because daily commute hardship. Many top firms and organizations are experiencing resignations and rejections of job offers because people are deterred by difficult daily travel.
People are opting for less attractive jobs simply because those are associated with reduced travel time. When people can’t achieve their potential due to traffic-limited job choices, we know that billions invested in educating our country’s workforce are going to waste. Clearly, the Philippines could have achieved higher economic growth if not for the huge costs associated with reduced mobility in our cities.
If we do nothing to help our struggling commuters, we’re compelling them to shift to using a private vehicle as soon as they can afford to. With this prospect of more vehicles on the road, congestion can still get much worse.
What should be done?
First, we need to increase public transport supply as soon as possible. Second, wherever we see shortages, government has to mobilize resources to fill the supply gap. Third, we should enable public transport vehicles to go faster by giving them priority in the use of road space.
Here are the key actions required.
Lift number-coding of public transport vehicles. Metro Manila is the only urban area in the world that restricts the number of public transport vehicles through number-coding. This removes 20% of the existing supply of public transport. Moreover, the number of private cars is allowed to increase every day while the total number of public transport vehicles has remained stagnant for the past decade. This is one of the most blatant examples of bad policy.
By lifting number-coding of public transport vehicles, more buses, jeepneys and UV express units will be immediately available. Hundreds of thousands of commuters would get home sooner every day. A huge benefit to our society would be achieved with no additional investment.
Deploy more vehicles on areas with major supply gaps. When there are stranded passengers during major catastrophes such as floods, government mobilizes its vehicles (trucks and buses) to ferry people who are stuck.
Today, we have an ongoing emergency of a similar kind–people are stranded by insufficient transport. People are stuck for hours without any transport option, sometimes in the rain or sweltering heat.
In these dire circumstances, now a daily occurrence, government should immediately provide interim transportation services. Desperate and suffering commuters expect government to respond as quickly as possible. They don’t want to hear that a solution will be coming only in 2022 or beyond.
As they do in times of natural disasters, DOTr, MMDA and local government units (LGUs) should conscript government trucks and buses and use them to serve those routes where the supply of transportation is insufficient. Additionally, DOTr, MMDA and city governments should charter buses on long term contracts and deploy them on such routes until adequate services from the private sector become available.
By leasing a fleet of buses (complete with drivers and fuel), local or national government would have more transport capacity at its disposal to respond to supply gaps without relying on private sector initiative or generosity. Having this fleet on contract gives government flexibility to move buses to areas with greatest need even to augment MRT/LRT during service interruptions.
Because MMDA and Metro Manila LGUs have keen interest in the welfare of their constituents, public transport could be one area where partnership with national government could make an immediate difference. And it need not be “charity”. Fares can be collected from passengers to defray the costs of bus charters.
Give public transport priority in the use of road space. There’s no other way to solve the transport crisis than to improve and expand public transport as fast as we can. To make people want to shift from private car use to public transport, we need to make the latter go faster than cars.
How is this achieved? Give public transport vehicles a dedicated lane where they can move efficiently and unobstructed by private cars. This can be accomplished even on tollways such as NLEX and SLEX where buses are usually stuck in long queues as they approach tollgates. To reduce travel time, motorcycle escorts can even lead convoys of buses. Bus rapid transit (BRT) should be implemented especially on congested major roads.
If buses have priority on roads, they can make more round trips every day. This increases public transport capacity using the same vehicle fleet. This would especially benefit riders of buses (including school, shuttle and P2P buses) and UV Express vehicles.
The emergency needs to be tackled now with resources we can deploy today. There are huge gains from getting commuters to their destinations sooner. Our work force will be happier, healthier and able to access opportunities that match their potential. Resolving the transport crisis apart from being pro-poor may be just what we need to raise our GDP growth rate further.
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
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