Improve mass transport!

WITH all the problems facing the country today, it made me wonder why the Department of Transportation (DOTr) should embarked on a losing enterprise. It has come up with the idea of replacing 15-year-old jeepneys.

This plan was made years ago but why do it now?

If the government is serious about its program to provide the masses with commuter trains or brand-new air conditioned buses, then I see no need to compel jeepney owners to change horses in mid-stream.

If in 10 or 15 years, the government is able to install a workable mass transportation system, the commuters would simply abandon riding jeepneys.

Commuter trains, combined with air-conditioned buses would be no match against jeepneys. Jeep riders would become scarce, jeep owners would find it difficult to earn a living, and they would simply die on the vine, to put it metaphorically. They would look for other ways of bringing home the bacon.

From my perspective, it seems we Filipinos find hard to part with bad habits.

From old jeepney to new jeepney is maintaining the status quo. It is having the same dog with a new collar.

Elsewhere on the planet, rightthinking bureaucrats provide their commuters with rails, Ubers, Grabs, bullet trains, and commuters trains, that carry more people, efficiently and on time.

Soon the world will adopt to the driverless cars powered by batteries. Yet in the Philippines, we seem to be forever stuck with this World War 2 relic of MacArthur and Eisenhower.

Jeepneys were converted US military vehicles left behind by the Americans in 1945. That was 72 years ago!

We have grown to more than 100 million inhabitants, home to the biggest malls on the planet, and happily embraced the electronic revolution.

The country’s membership in the social media is top of the chart, we have the savviest customers who would not settle for second best, we have Starbucks and McDo galore.

Yet here we are today, as far as transport is concerned, still pining to retain the jeepney that should have been scuttled and consigned to the scrap yards long ago.