When being ‘spoiled’ helps

Where else in the world do people get door-to-door public transport? It seems that the average Filipino, to get anywhere, steps out of the house; walks several paces (if at all); hails a pedicab or motorized tricycle; rides to the jeepney, “FX,” or bus stop; rides a jeepney, FX or bus; gets off and hops on to another pedicab/tricycle; and gets transported right at the door of his/her final destination.

Only in the Philippines? Maybe not, but it would look like we Filipinos are a spoiled lot. We should be the envy of the average First World commuter. I know, as I’ve actually experienced it. As a temporary Tokyo resident years ago, I had to do a lot of walking daily, between the subway stations and my office or apartment—and given the pace of daily life there, it was brisk, sweat-inducing walking, even at the height of winter. Upon emerging from my neighborhood subway station in the evenings, I would imagine pedicabs and tricycles swarming around me to save me from the seven-minute walk to my apartment. Yes, these oft-despised (by private car motorists, that is) “kings of the road” in our neighborhoods provide us Filipinos a valuable, if spoiling, service that most of us take for granted—until we go abroad and realize how privileged we have been with door-to-door transport accessible to rich and poor alike.

They are part of a sector belonging to the informal (aka underground) economy, and are a significant, even critical, part of our economy. The transport industry ranks second only to trade as the biggest provider of jobs in the services sector, providing jobs to more than two million Filipinos. While the data don’t reflect a finer breakdown, it’s quite likely that the bigger part of those recorded as employed in wholesale and retail trade don’t work in malls or formal commercial establishments, but are really vendors and even scavengers in the underground economy. Similarly, the bigger part of those recorded to be working in the transport sector probably don’t work in airlines, shipping, trains, or buses, but drive jeepneys, tricycles and pedicabs.

When I had to let go of my driver with my temporary posting in Japan back then, he wanted to use his separation pay to make a down payment on a tricycle. It didn’t work out, but he ended up driving someone else’s tricycle anyway, on a “pa-extra-extra” basis. There must be countless more Filipinos like him for whom driving a jeepney, tricycle, or some variant thereof is the ready recourse when no other job is forthcoming.

Danielle Guillen focused her PhD dissertation at the University of Tsukuba on these occupations comprising the informal public transport sector. The variations and innovations in the industry, especially in the rural areas, can be fascinating. Where tricycles cannot penetrate, rural people rely on the “habal-habal” (motorcycle “taxis” with extended seats). Its name derives from the reproductive act of swine—which is what the efficient, if awkward, position of the passengers appears to mimic. There is also a variation called the “skylab,” where the motorcycle seat’s extension is a lateral plank, achieving a configuration not unlike that of the space station after which it was named.

Dr. Guillen had an explanation why Filipinos favor these occupations, even when there are alternatives. Such jobs are seen as a steady source of day-to-day income, never mind that total earnings over time may actually be smaller than in other options. And these are occupations that have little, if any, barriers to entry. What matters for the average Filipino in that situation, she observed, is the regularity of income, something that possibly more remunerative alternatives like farming often don’t offer. Thus, this industry, with all its attendant problems and undesirable effects—not the least among which are traffic congestion, and air and noise pollution—is an economic reality that would be hard to supplant with more formal and potentially more environmentally friendly public transport modes operated on a larger and likely more economic scale.

Until we can find those drivers better alternatives, Filipinos might as well remain spoiled. A lot of livelihoods depend on it.

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