Safety for public commuters
The incident last Wednesday when a woman jumped onto the southbound tracks of a Metro Railway Transit (MRT) station has put into question the safety of the country’s train system. This should be a wake-up call to review safety precautions, not only for railways, but for land, sea, and air transports in general.
These safety precautions including having platform screen doors or gates for train stations, proper bicycle lanes incorporated into the road network, and life vests in passenger ships are some of the hallmarks of an efficient and modern transport system. Unfortunately, many transportation-related deaths, whether on the road, rail, or sea, have pointed to the lack of such precautionary measures.
This is not even the first time it happened at the MRT — over the years many passengers have jumped onto the tracks, and every time someone does, the government will announce plans to put up platform screen doors or gates that are common in train stations in Tokyo, Taipei, London, and other cosmopolitan cities.
This was the case in 2013 when a male passenger committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. The Aquino III administration estimated the cost of putting up these protective barriers — which not only serve to prevent suicides but also enable more efficient ventilation within the station and better security control — to be around P10 million to P20 million per station; it planned to include their installation in that or the next year’s (2014) budget. Nothing, however, came out of it.
Under the Duterte administration, the installation of platform screen doors was proposed, again, and as with the previous administration, this did not materialize due to a lack of funds or political will.
The proposal, as expected, has been revived following Wednesday’s incident with Transportation Assistant Secretary Jorjette Aquino talking of plans to pursue the recommendation but with a caveat: “As long as there is enough budget.” The government has made it known so many times that there is barely any money to fund basic public services even if, for example, it can afford to send nonessential staff on overseas trips.
It’s the same story for bicycle lanes — advocates said the government would need at least P14 billion to build them across the country. This year’s P700 million budget for the construction of at least 470 kilometers worth of lanes is but a mere 5 percent of the required budget to build a comprehensive bicycle lane network.
The construction of bike lanes has become even more imperative over the pandemic with an increase in the number of cyclists on the road. Because of the lack of protection for cyclists, there has been an increase in bicycle road crashes with an almost 50 percent jump from 1,759 in 2019 to 2,606 in 2020.
In addition, based on the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority’s (MMDA) most recent available data, there were 2,397 bicycle-related road crashes on the metropolis’ dangerous roads in 2021 and 33 of these were fatal.
It’s not only bike lanes. Pavements also have to be safe and walkable for pedestrians for road systems to be more inclusive to all users. How many pedestrians have been involved in accidents because of poorly constructed sidewalks, that is if they exist at all? In the absence of sidewalks, pedestrians are forced to walk right on the street where they are more at risk of being sideswiped or run over by passing vehicles. MMDA’s data show there were 2,122 cases of hit and run/hitting a pedestrian in 2021, and almost five percent or 104 of these were fatal.
Budget is not the only excuse for the lack of safety measures. The nonobservance of safety regulations has claimed many lives. In maritime accidents, victims are known to have drowned because they were not wearing life vests as these were unavailable or not easily accessible like what happened in the 2008 maritime accident off San Fernando, Romblon, involving the Princess of the Stars ferry.
In the most recent accident off Basilan last month, some passengers of MV Lady Mary Joy 3, which caught fire, jumped into the sea without life jackets. That this essential for sea travel was not available or that crew members were negligent only points to the disregard for safety that has been common in many transportation-related tragedies.
Perhaps it is worth looking into a Senate proposal of creating a Philippine Transportation Safety Board that would investigate transportation-related accidents and incidents and make recommendations critical to the safety of the country’s transportation systems.
But it is not enough to act only after these tragedies have happened — the government needs to prevent them from happening in the first place. This entails allocating that budget now and immediately getting into building the necessary safety measures, i.e., platform screen doors at train stations, bicycle lanes, and proper pavements, as well as strict implementation of appropriate laws, to ensure safe journeys for the commuting public.
