The Pope and the bus

Immediately after the Roman Catholic conclave ended, media outlets all over the world started extolling the admirable traits of the new pope.  Most notable in their characterization of the former Argentine cardinal are, he lives in an apartment (instead of the cardinal's palace), he rides a bus in going to work, and he cooks his own food.  Indeed all those three aspects tell you this man exemplifies humility in its ordinary and real sense.  Many of us in this modern material world are busy lusting for that new car, a bigger house, and the tastiest food.

Sometimes to the point of being illogical.  Anybody who knows how to cook will tell you the tastiest food are the once you cook yourself, in your own kitchen, assuming you have enough paraphernalia and ingredients, of course.  And it's not improbable for one to prefer an apartment over a cardinal's palace, the former maybe more comfortable and convenient.  The bus riding is another matter - it seems to be a product of a widely accepted but misplaced concept that riding a bus is lowly.  The bus is generally seen as a poor man's transportation.

This article is not about the pope.  It's about the bus, and our misconception of it.  The former cardinal riding a bus in Buenos Aires bespeaks of his humility.  But that's because we dismiss the bus and public transportation, as the transportation of the poor.  Yet, another South American personality, my good friend, Enrique Peñalosa, said, “Una ciudad avanzada no es en la que los pobres pueden moverse en carro, sino una en la que incluso los ricos utilizan el transporte público.”  Try searching in the internet for “the ten most livable cities of the world,” and you will find out that in these cities, the rich ride metros, subways, BRTs and buses.

“An advanced city is not in that the poor can move in car, but one in which even the rich ones use the public transport.”  We live not in an advanced country or city but in a developing one.  Neither can Buenos Aires in Argentina or Bogota in Columbia (where Peñalosa came from and was mayor once) claim that they are advanced cities.  In these cities and countries, just like in the Philippines, people generally look down on public transportation, it be buses or jeepneys.  Of course, it's also because we have neglected to develop our public transportation systems in the previous decades.  Plus, the wrongly placed notion that the rail is much better.

Our Philippine cities, from Aparri to Jolo, dreams of having an LRT someday, just to have a taste of what Manila had.  But since these trains cost more than five times, sometimes 10 times their bus counterparts, we never got to building one outside of the capital.  People were in disbelief when Mayor Osmeña consistently disagreed with the LRT proposals in the last two decades, but he was right - the three previous proposals were not feasible and would have drained the city's coffers.  Now we're building a BRT and Manila is building these, too!  At least, three lines are in the drawing board and many others are planned.

It's just us.  We look at the bus as the poor man's transport and we hurry our way to get away from it (and the jeepney) and buy our first car (well, ... motorcycle first).  But in London with its very extensive array of subway systems, more people are moved by buses each day than by the train.  In Tokyo, Japan, people use buses everyday, even the rich ones, and most of the population uses public transportation in going to work, than private cars.  It eases congestion on the city's streets, depressing the need to build road infrastructure and save on tax-payers money, and it encourages a more sustainable and healthier environment, too.

When he was mayor, Peñalosa built the popular “TransMilenio” bus rapid transit in Bogota in 2000, similar to the first BRT built in Curitiba in 1974.  In June 1, 2011, Argentina's first BRT, the “Metrobus” in Buenos Aires.  I am very sure the new pope has taken a ride in that BRT and I am even more positive that he liked it better than the ordinary bus.  It's about time we get the right understanding of public transportation, and not the wrongly-placed connotation that it is a poor man's ride, prompting us to praise the new pope for using it.  Hopefully, once the BRT is in place, we'll see a paradigm shift on what really is a developed sustainable city.