Seating capacity
(The following piece finds print for the nth time, this time hopefully getting the attention of land transportation authorities now that the governemnt is serious in modernizing our jeepenys for the sake of lowering their contribution to pollution, improving their safety and making jeepney rides convenient to the public. - RD) almost got in trouble one time with a fellow aging passenger over the unrealistic seating capacity of our jeepneys. Transport officials who set and implement standards ignore this simply because they don’t ride mass transport. They ride in their own cars or office-issued vehicles driven by government-paid pilots.
Even with the Filipino’s average bantam size, each of the twin benches approved and certified by the government franchising agency for 10 is often just enough for nine passengers. A so-called nineseater fits eight, and an eight-seater is actually made for seven, even with the Pinoy capacity to constrict and adjust to the givens. It’s embarrassing, truly inconvenient for the last two passengers to fill either jeepney row to incapacity. Often, they have to inch their way through baggage to the innermost space, just behind the driver. Earlier passengers spare themselves that inconvenience when they alight by sitting nearest the exit, also to spare themselves from passing on fares to the driver. With a misplaced sense of urgency and need for self-comfort, they immediately pass on their fare to the last passenger, for the latter to pass on to the driver even before he or she could attempt to settle down or whip out his or her own fare.
The last two in can’t squeeze in or won’t even try, especially when sandwiched between two of the opposite sex. They’re just lucky if the overhead support bars are long enough for them to grip. Otherwise, it’s a balancing act until a passenger alights and temporarily allows space. Chances are another passenger standing and hanging on the tail-end bars fills in the gap or
Ithe driver loads in another. The last two will find their protruding knuckles (and heads) knocking each other when “patay malisya” fellow fares grudgingly give them inches of space directly facing each other.
We have gone a long way since the days of the auto calesa, those Willys and Eisenhower military jeeps converted into more realistic threeseaters. The jeepney has expanded, only to fall short of the convenience that those war surplus machines used to provide.
Transport officials approving franchises now hardly consider passenger seating – and even road – capacity. After all, they don’t ride jeepneys like we, lesser mortals, do. It would be most ironic and embarrassing for them who approve transport franchises not to have their own service vehicles.
Perhaps it was his thin frame that encouraged my fellow passenger, who came in last, to be loud in his demand for space. He an-