Public transportation

Almost a month into his new job as DOTr Secretary,  I am sure my friend Jimmy Bautista is wondering what he got himself into. The country’s public transportation system is a mess and his predecessor did little to make it better.

Jimmy is no stranger to management challenges. He was, after all, running Philippine Airlines and that’s probably one of the most challenging local companies to manage. Now he probably has 10 times the problems he had at PAL.

Trying to avoid stepping on sensitive toes in a family corporation like PAL must have given Jimmy the experience he needs in his new job. He now has to keep politicians and some characters claiming closeness to his boss happy without compromising his integrity.

But Jimmy the manager has the right can-do attitude. He has this sense of mission to serve the Filipino public, a proper climax to his career. I like it that even before he took office, he started going around to find out what he can do about the most urgent problems in transportation.

I have long urged his predecessors to ride the MRT and the buses to get a feel of how commuters suffer day in and day out. Jimmy did that in his first week in office.

His LTFRB chief, Cheloy Velicarta-Garafil did the same thing. She rode a bus on the EDSA carousel route, something her predecessor had been urged to do. Indeed, she saw for herself how commuters wait endless hours for their rides.

As a result, Ms. Garafil worked to immediately pay the bus companies in the EDSA carousel consortia so they can field all of the contracted 440 buses instead of just about half of that. Operators have complained that they can no longer pay their diesel suppliers and their drivers due to the much delayed payment of the government.

The nightmares of commuters have not eased right away, but at least there is reason to hope that we now have government officials who understand their problems and are determined to make things right. Our barbaric public transport system must be civilized.

Dealing with the bus operators is a big challenge for every transport secretary. Art Tugade was lucky that the pandemic gave him the opportunity to start from scratch. The service contracting scheme and the EDSA busway were supposed to be the start of doing something right.

But Tugade lost his nerve and left the management of the buses to subordinates, notably with LTFRB officials appointed by Duterte who didn’t seem to care. Delayed payment by the government became a good reason for the bus operators to hobble the long overdue reform program.

To the credit of Tugade, he managed to complete the rehabilitation of the MRT-3 system, including the tracks and the related electrical and signaling systems. Thanks to JICA, Sumitomo did what ought to be done.

But the China-made Dalian trains are still unused. Bought by then Sec. Jun Abaya during PNoy’s watch, the trains were delivered out of specifications.  I don’t understand why Tugade supposedly agreed to pay for those trains before the supplier could bring them up to spec.

The Dalian trains are necessary to increase MRT3’s capacity if we are to avoid the long lines of waiting commuters. The bus carousel using the dedicated busway augments the capacity of MRT-3 specially during rush hours.

Because Metro Manila is now a city that never sleeps, with all the BPOs operating around the clock, public transportation must also be provided to service the folks who bring in the foreign exchange to help keep our economy afloat.

The new DOTr Secretary should not be distracted by complaints of car riders about buses getting preferential treatment through a dedicated busway. The mission of a transportation chief is to move people, not cars.

And let us not discriminate against provincial bus riders. They are Filipinos too who commute long distances to work in NCR. Beyond making sure provincial bus drivers do not block traffic flows in the vicinity of their depots, they should have free access to the city.

Unfortunately, DOTr Secretaries over several presidencies failed to provide decent public transportation for our workers. I am hopeful Jimmy will be different.

Towards the end of his watch, Tugade found more joy supervising the construction of the train lines to Clark and the new subway being funded by JICA. I thought he was also working on some train lines to be funded by China, but as I wrote last Wednesday, China refused to provide the requested financing.

That’s no big loss, as I also explained in my column last Wednesday. Jimmy should not worry too much about the Subic-Clark and Davao Railway and just try to figure out how to get going on the Bicol line.

The new tourism secretary said much must be done to bring our international gateway airports to world standards. Mactan and Clark, both built by Megawide, are the only ones we can be proud of.

The Bohol Panglao International Airport is even newer than Mactan, but I noticed during my last visit early this month that it is starting to look shabby. The plan was to let the private sector manage this airport, but so far that has not happened.

Actually, even Finance Secretary Ben Diokno said it is a good idea to let the private sector work on our key airports. Let CAAP regulate local aviation, but let professional airport managers run our airports according to world standards.

We are starting to hear noises again about rehabilitating NAIA, but based on past experience, six years of a presidential term is too short to deal with the politics involved. Nothing should stop Junior’s administration from privatizing the management of NAIA terminals.

As a former president of PAL, Jimmy knows what is wrong with our airports. It shouldn’t take time for him to improve things.

I think Jimmy is off to a good start. I hope he goes beyond the symbolic MRT ride and quickly delivers relief for our long suffering commuters. That should be his priority.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.