Journey

Nothing can prepare the uninitiated for Manila’s public transport system. Day in and day out, millions of people crowding this haphazardly planned metropolis cram themselves inside jeepneys, buses and trains, enduring a daily defiance of science’s “matter cannot occupy space at the same time and place.”

Rickety jeepneys—a legacy from our American colonial past—ply narrow roads, serving as the main mode of transport for most everyone. Buses, often overloaded, speed on highways, indifferent to the traffic situation or weather condition, leaving a trail of smog to choke commuters, or headed toward a tragic accident. And of course, there’s the LRT/MRT trains, bursting at the seams whether rush hour or not, plagued by poor maintenance and a riding public’s desperation and lack of discipline.

Commuting in the metro is a journey of its own. Every day the dangers are unending, with twists and turns ranging from funny to fatal. But taking public transport is the only choice for citizens like me who cannot afford a spanking-new SUV along with rising fuel costs. Tricycles, jeepneys, buses, trains—they are options I have to settle for.

It isn’t easy having no choice. The people seem to have outgrown the system, which means comfort is not something you can expect. Take the jeepneys, for example, and their drivers’ everyday lies. The space that can hold only 16 passengers is often made to accommodate 20. How many of us have had to pretend we’re seated when we’re actually balancing on a few inches of our rear end? And the driver calls for two more passengers, “magkabilaan,” when really, there is no more room.

It’s the same difficulty one faces when taking the bus. It’s always a battle for seats. If you’re unlucky, then you would have to balance yourself in a speeding Joanna Jesh, or Citybus, or Manrose. Standing on the aisle, pressed against other commuters, you have to maneuver delicately and smartly, with other passengers alighting and boarding, the conductor moving in whatever impossible space is left between people, calling out stops—both legal and illegal—while collecting fare and handing out tickets and change.

There is always a situation—a male passenger lucky enough to find a seat and pretending to be asleep in order to avoid giving it up to a woman standing in front of him; a middle-aged woman declining an offered seat, only to erupt in a loud voice a few minutes later to preach about the end of the world and ask for donations to her church; freshly awakened young professionals in their crisp corporate attire side by side with working-class stiffs; men and women lost in their thoughts, thinking perhaps of the still sleeping family they left behind, or how on earth they’ll get down at Starmall with a bus so crowded.

But if you want to see pure madness, and perhaps the best illustration of the horrendous state of public transport in the country, then take the MRT trains. Nothing brings out the worst in Filipinos than the rail system along Edsa. Women, calm and collected at the turnstiles, turn into completely different beasts as they jostle at the platform and in the women’s-only first car. Expletives are heard with every train coming in, with passengers pushing and shoving their way out against passengers who cannot wait to get in. Tempers fray at the announcement “Stop entry, northbound.”

And who can blame commuters for their wild side, especially after enduring an unimaginably cruel station layout, with the long flights of stairs, escalators always out of order, queues that never make any sense, and station guards who are often just dumbstruck by the ocean of people? A delay, or skipped train, can be another half-hour lost for a construction worker so wanting to be with a much-missed son, and maybe another long queue at the FX terminal for the tired bank clerk who missed her southbound hitch.

The point I am making is this: Public transport, as I’ve experienced in the National Capital Region, is more of a livelihood than a service to the public. Buses, after all, are private franchises. Jeepneys are privately owned, and tricycles are often built from scratch or paid for on installment by their owners. Yes, they are regulated, or so we’d like to think. But so much of them are fueled by people, companies, and organizations who view passengers as profit, and not as a public that deserves, at the very least, a safe and dignified means of getting to their destination.

Come to think of it, isn’t this how the corruption scandals have portrayed many of our public officials—as people who are running a system where they have the supreme advantage? And they’re insulated by their bulletproof SUVs and sedans with tinted windows, unaware of the suffering of those who work in honest professions; unfeeling because they don’t have to worry about suffocating in a bus or train during the rush hour; indifferent as they head to another round of bickering and blatant lying in what they call “work” or “privilege speeches.”

It is the public that endures everything.

We tolerate. We make do with what is available, hoping that maybe the government will finally have enough political will and character to overhaul the public transport system, and not merely rely on the superficial remedies of the Metro Manila Development Authority and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board. Sadly, it seems that the ordinary Filipino has to pay the price, carry the burden, and risk getting mugged in a jeep or finding himself in a bus falling from the Skyway, to awaken those who should be vigilant in their watch.

I remember one funny incident at the MRT. It was during the time when stations actually played music, and the clocks above the platforms actually worked. As my packed train finally came to a halt in the Quezon Avenue station, and as the doors opened to everyone’s sigh of relief, I alighted and was greeted by a Lea Salonga song, “What a journey it has been/And the end is not in sight.” For a moment I thought life was playing a trick on me. Seconds later I laughed at the accuracy and timing of the lyrics, laughed at the irony of it all, an irony that seems truer every day.

For commuters, it is always one hell of a journey. For a society still with so much to learn, an end to the daily suffering involved in taking public transport doesn’t seem to be within sight. Surely we do not have to literally risk life and limb in the daily madness. Does the ride have to be so bitter to make the arrival home such a relief, and the welcoming embrace from parents, children, or spouse warmer than any heart can possibly imagine?

Josemaria A. Bassig, 23, is a marketing officer at the School of Law and Governance, University of Asia and the Pacific.