I AM one of the majority in our country who rely on public transport to go about the daily business. That means that depending on the nature and urgency of the errand at hand, and the availability of public utility vehicles, I would most likely be hailing any one or a combination of the following: taxi, jeepney, tricycle, trisikad, bus, and even the occasional habal-habal.
One of my reasons for continuing to resist the option of getting a private mode of transportation is that I’m trying (trying being the operative word) to manage the size of my carbon footprint (that, and the huge challenge related to finding secure parking in a city).
Public transport as an aspect of urban transport is supposed to be one of the major measures for helping urban and rapidly urbanizing societies manage carbon emissions -- provided that such a transport system is sustainable.
The scope and dimensions of sustainable transport as articulated by the Davao Sustainable Urban Transport (DSUT) Project of which I am part include environmental sustainability(e.g., low carbon emissions, minimal disruptions in the physical environment and visual impact),financial sustainability(that is, revenues are sufficient to cover costs and still remain affordable), and social sustainability (i.e., most current needs are covered, is inclusive and adaptable to foreseeable future needs; promotes safety; and is supported by a wide range of stakeholders with their active participation). Public transport is one of the aspects of urban transport; the others being private, non-motorized and goods/logistics transport.
The key to ensuring the sustainability of transport is to focus planning on and for people (and may I add, the environment), rather than on vehicles.
In Davao City, DSUT studies indicate that around 78% of motorized trips every day is made by people taking public transport using the 14,000 jeepneys, taxis and motorized tricycles for hire operating in the city. It should be noted that the number of public utility vehicles is conservative, as it does not include vehicles that do not have franchises and yet are plying the streets for passengers. Nevertheless, given the dominant use of public transport by the city’s population, then the public transport system certainly merits the attention of the City Government and its constituents.
The challenges to public transport in Davao are myriad. On the one hand, the city has to deal with high demand for vehicles during peak hours and the congestion in key streets, particularly in the central business district (CBD). On the other hand, the studies conducted by DSUT indicated that an estimated 412,000 residents of 51 barangays do not have access to reliable public jeepney or Filcab/multicab services, or at best get only poor service. These 412,000 residents are 1/3 of the total population of the city’s planned urbanized area. This means that because jeepneys and Filcabs/multicabs are not regularly available, many of these residents end up taking taxis or habals-habals. The first one is an expensive option and prohibitive for many; the other one is unsafe and unregulated.
Transport being a vital service -- and it can be argued right up there with the social, economic and environmental services that citizens and communities require -- it begs the question how this situation of problematic access to transport services in Davao City came about.
The challenges and factors that underpin the condition of public transport in Davao (and elsewhere in the country) are similarly myriad. Among the key ones are the highly centralized approach to transport regulation, the relatively weak involvement of the local government in transport planning and management, and the dominant mindset that regards transport provision as livelihood or a business rather than a service.
Transport regulation is largely the concern of agencies like the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and the Land Transportation Office (LTO). But how can agencies that only have limited presence at the regional and district levels be able to proactively, adequately and in a responsive way determine the public transport needs of a locality? And multiply that by the number of localities across the country to imagine the tremendous demand on the human and technical resources of these offices.
Local governments are, by law, the architects and managers of development in their areas of responsibility, which would presumably include transport. But in practice their involvement in transport is largely limited to the franchising of motorized tricycles for hire for cities and municipalities, and traffic enforcement and management. Land use and transport policies and processes have to go hand in hand to make sure that one supports the other, and disconnects that are costly and inconvenient are avoided.
In Davao City, the 2013 population of 1.58 M is expected to hit 1.777 million in 2018, which means that in five years the City Government has to ensure that an additional 197,000people have access to and benefit from housing, transport, economic opportunities, social services, and a healthy environment. The City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) for 2013-2022 included as one of its objectives to “Integrate land use planning, transport planning, water planning, energy provision and infrastructure planning”. This is an important policy pronouncement but the necessary processes and mechanisms have to be rapidly put in place – in this case and very specifically, the formulation of a City Transportation Plan that would be incorporated in the CLUP.
The country’s transport model is one that leaves transport service delivery to the private sector. In operational terms, this meant that transport provision gets treated as a source of livelihood (for those operators and operators-drivers whose means are very modest), or a business (think of those big interprovincial bus operations). But the franchise system only specifies routes, rather than a more comprehensive level of service (i.e., number, frequency and schedule of trips, as well as quality of the riding experience), and transport operations are largely unorganized/individual rather than collectivist. Transport services then are often left to the discretion of the individual operator or operator-driver. This means that transport users, particularly in hard to reach areas, can be literally left in a lurch when the transport provider decides to run late or not run at all for the day.
When it claimed to be a city where “Life is here”, Davao City also took on the challenge of continuous improvement and the reforms that underlie it. One cannot be among Asia’s Most Livable Cities and expect to just rest on one’s laurels; the living conditions of the locality, and the services that are necessary to achieve those conditions just have to get better and better.
In public transport this includes recognizing, rationalizing, regulating and reconciling a wide range of interests and needs of the different transport stakeholders: the providers (operators, drivers and others providing auxiliary support), the users, and the regulators and policymakers. But that’s hardly a daunting and surprising task for Davao.
After all, Davao City has successfully initiated and concluded a number of transport reforms in the past – the phase-out of the minicab and non-aircon taxis; the removal of terminals in many CBD areas; and more recently the general re-routing. Going back to the “Life is here” claim life, as we know it, has many demands that are complex and often competing.
To be sure, the challenges of public transport are not unique to Davao City. They are shared by other localities that are urban and urbanizing. But that is the point, should Davao City succeed in its efforts to reform and continuously improve the delivery of public transport, it could again, as it has many times in the past, be the source of yet another good practice that can be replicated by other local governments.
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