Post COVID public transport

by Boo Chanco (The Philippine Star), 13 May 2020

Mother’s Day caused a heavy traffic jam on Morato St in Quezon City despite the quarantine. Apparently, the restaurants were open for pick up orders and a pandemonium of illegal parking and bad driving happened. We should dread to imagine how things will be once enhanced community quarantine is downgraded.

This late in the day, we have yet to hear of government plans for the return of public vehicles after quarantine is lifted. A modified or general community quarantine may allow more workers to get to work, but unless there is public transport, how can they?

FINEX, an association of financial executives, recently came up with some ideas on how the crisis can be used to start fixing public transport. Businessman Ed Yap drafted the plan and he wrote about it here at PhilStar last May 8.

Ed wants to start with EDSA’s chaotic bus system. He wants to convert all the bus operators into a single virtual BRT type of a consortium setup. Ed and I have been talking about this proposal for years, but DOTr seems contented with the current situation.

Adopting the virtual BRT consortium will not displace present bus operators. It will minimize capex investments specially at this time when getting loans will be a problem.

Picture an Uber system for buses. Ownership of buses remains with current operators. But there will be a technology-based service provider to dispatch the buses as required by passenger demand.

No more boundary system and the drivers will be given schedules to meet and paid a salary. Operators will be compensated based on a pre-agreed rate per bus round trip. Riders will use a no-contact payment system.

Of course, the buses will be given exclusive right to run in the designated bus lanes, evading the traffic mess, and thus enabling the buses to make the number of bus trips that had been earlier agreed upon.

There may be some subsidies required at the start to get the system going, but the virtual BRT should not be dependent on government money. Only the right number of buses will be part of the system. The oversupply of buses on the EDSA route will be over.

It is a good sign that LTFRB was reported to have been planning to allow only “a single bus route dedicated to Edsa” out of 61 existing routes once quarantine rules are relaxed after May 15. It isn’t the virtual BRT we have in mind, but it is a start.

According to Samar Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, only 29 out of the current 96 bus routes in Metro Manila will be given special franchises as we transition from lockdown to general community quarantine. All new routes will be “dedicated and non-overlapping.”

There is another idea from Benjamin dela Pena, a US-based transport specialist. He wants government to use the economic rescue package to pay operators and drivers to run their routes.

“Government pays the equivalent daily income of the bus or jeep…

“A jeepney brings in about P4,000 a day, of which the driver takes home P700. The rest goes to the boundary (vehicle rent — which is the operator’s revenue), fuel, and maintenance.

“There are about 55,000 jeeps in Metro Manila. The total daily cost of buying jeepney service would be P172 million. That’s just .05 percent of the total coronavirus economic stimulus package for the Philippines (P330 billion).

“If we ran the program for 90 days, it would cost P15.5 billion, or less than five percent of the total stimulus. I think that is well worth the cost of keeping Metro Manila running.

“Buying the daily routes gives the government leverage to do the following:

“Make public transportation free… because the government is paying them to run the routes…

“Effect social distancing rules in public transport by reducing the number of riders. The government can then effectively prescribe limits to ridership, e.g. only 10 people allowed on a jeepney that can carry 18. The drivers will comply because it doesn’t affect their income.

“Change driver (and system) behavior because we break the passenger = driver income link, drivers will not be swerving in and out of traffic to pick-up passengers (and earn fares).

“The government can impose performance standards that could include:

“Organized stops —we can designate jeepney stops along the routes and require drop offs and pick-ups only in the stops.

“Required trip completion times —we can impose an average time to complete a one-way route (depending on the route) and require the drivers to comply.

“Set headways and controlled dispatching we can control the time between jeepneys by defining and imposing head ways at the start of the routes (e.g., depending on demand: One jeepney every three minutes at peak, one jeepney every five or seven minutes off-peak). We can set up dispatches at the either end of the route, they will need it to verify route completion anyway

“Use GPS based-tracking and verification drivers will be required to check in at the start and end of every route to confirm that they ran the route. It will be easy enough to put together a proximity-based phone app and require drivers to upload an app that traces their routes and ‘clocks’ them into the route. Dispatchers with compatible apps can check them in and check them out of the route…”

So many interesting ideas to use the crisis to institute public transport reforms we should have done decades ago. The only real problem I see is a DOTr that isn’t imaginative enough, nor driven enough to fix even just EDSA in the last four years the current leadership had been in charge.

DOTr is very good in issuing press releases. Let us hear the DOTr secretary endorse the LTFRB plan as described by Rep. Sarmiento. Then, maybe, we can hold our breath they will execute the plan well.