Transportation woes

What could be more pathetic than seeing a young mother dying on a footbridge in Pasay City while waiting for the next available bus ride back to her hometown in Camarines Sur to see her four children?

Prior to that, she had to walk from Cubao to Pasay under the heat of the sun to chance upon a bus to bring her home. Unfortunately, fatigue and health complications brought her “home.”

Then there is that bicycle rider who simply dropped dead along EDSA, after spinning his wheel for miles just to reach his job station. Exhaustion, overfatigue and medical complications were the cause of the immediate demise.

Hundreds of witnesses can come forward to declare how inefficient and shortsighted our economic and transport helmsmen really are in addressing the transport needs of workers especially.

The general community quarantine (GCQ) was meant to ease the lockdown for the economy to inch a bit from being static from at least three months of inactivity.

Unfortunately, there were no means to move their feet toward their places of work. Walking for hours under the scorching sun and the profuse rain, exposing the poor laborers to the elements, risking their very health and well-being was the only alternative.

All economic sages know that mobility with speed, of course, is vital to any productive economic activity.

Yet, it would seem that the three departments, namely, the Department of Transportation, Department of Labor and Unemployment, Department of Trade and Industry, and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority were not really friends after all.

They failed to hinge their heads to coalesce and grind symbiotically their expertise in anticipating the idiosyncrasies of the new normal.

Initially, they could have advised those working from home to continue doing so to avoid clogging the streets in an ecstatic escape from the lockdown.

Then, while discouraging private vehicles, public utility vehicles should have been allowed to hit the streets to ferry the ordinary and poorer laborers.

As usual, the reactionary government would pull strings and start mending their piecemeal dynamics to solve a situation that went pfftt.

Problems are being solved not proactively,

“Walking

for hours under the scorching sun and the profuse rain, exposing the poor laborers to the elements, risking their very health and well-being was the only alternative.

but as they unfold right before their myopic sight, the challenges that could have been addressed with foresight and due diligence.

Do they have to see the stranded miserable passengers before they put in more buses, tricycles, taxis, Transportation Network Vehicle Service and, now, bicycles, despite the unpreparedness for a system that would guarantee the safety of the riders?

Yes, of course, the registration of bicycles comes in before anything else!

Air transport is even worse, especially, when some airlines would cancel flights without prior notice, because destinations would not accept incoming passengers from COVID-prone areas.

Passengers who have travelled great distances and shouldered costs who were refused to board have no means to return home and would just slump their exhausted bodies under flyovers, footbridges or anywhere on street corners, close to the airport, with luggage on hand and tickets tucked into their waist bags.

Simply pathetic, because of the lack of foresight!

“Do

they have to see the stranded miserable passengers before they put in more buses, tricycles, taxis, Transportation Network Vehicle Service and, now, bicycles?