Better bus services should be our priority

THERE is growing consensus that improving our public transportation system, both railand road-based, is key to solving our mobility crisis. Rail systems need to be expanded, but placing all our eggs in the “rail basket” will not deliver our desired outcomes.

Public transportation needs to be of high quality. This means it’s safe, accessible, non- polluting, reliable and abundant. If rail services are the only type of mass transit with predictable travel times, our trains will continue to be severely congested. Rail and bus services complement each other and should be upgraded in parallel.

We need also to consider timeliness and cost. Rail systems require a much longer gestation period.

A good example is the ongoing Metro Rail Transit 7, a 23-kilometer train system running mostly on an elevated track from San Jose del Monte City in Bulacan province to the common station at North Avenue on EDSA. Although the project secured all its financing requirements in 2016, the project is only 51-percent complete after four years.

Rail systems can also be costly. For example, the Japan International Cooperation Agencyfinanced Metro Manila Subway —

which would initially serve about 400,000 passengers daily — will require an investment of $7 billion and eight to 10 years to complete. Therefore, spending on many rail lines all at the same time is not viable.

If we want significant, tangible results before the end of the Duterte administration while waiting for major rail projects to become operational, we should focus on modernizing city bus services. Buses need to be abundant, safe, convenient, reliable and, as much as possible, have predictable travel times, so that car and motorcycle owners would use public transport and leave their vehicles at home. What needs to be done?

First, we have to change the bus industry business model so that we eliminate the dangerous and inefficient on-street competition. Throughout the world, such competition is associated with unsafe and low-quality public transport. When operator income and driver incentives are linked to the number of passengers on the bus, bus drivers will race to catch more riders — and then linger at bus stops, blocking the vehicles behind them. To improve mobility, one of the strategic objectives of the Transportation department should be to transform that business model.

There are two ways of revising this. One is to contract bus operators to deliver a service; bus operators can be paid a fixed “fee per kilometer,” with incentives and penalties linked to achievement of agreed service standards. The bus driver, who earns a fixed salary plus benefits, focuses on delivering a consistent service. The income of the operator is linked to service delivery, rather than the number of passengers. A public transport agency collects the fares, plans and monitors bus services, and manages the operators’ contracts. This is how high-quality bus systems are organized, such as those in Singapore and London.

An alternative is for all city bus operators to agree to place all fare revenue in a common “pot” and divide it according to each operator’s share in delivering bus services ( as measured by the operator’s contribution to the total number of kilometers traveled by all city buses). Under this approach, all buses work as part of the same team, rather than competing with each other. Bus operators are motivated to collaborate to increase demand for bus services and enlarge the size of the pot. This system was successfully introduced in Seoul, South Korea in 2004, and is considered one of the “best practice” examples of bus industry reform.

Second, we need to modernize buses. Most buses on EDSA are old, poorly designed and highly polluting. Many are secondhand, do not meet emissions standards

under the Clean Air Act, and have seating configuration that is not conducive to fast boarding and alighting required of city buses.

You would notice that many buses on EDSA have only one door, where passengers both enter and exit; you need to climb four to five steps to get into the bus — something that is difficult for the elderly, small children or persons carrying heavy packages; and impossible for persons in wheelchairs or strollers. For buses to be accessible to people of all abilities, they should be either “low floor” or “low entry” to allow a passenger, even one in a wheelchair, to enter the bus without climbing any internal steps. Point-to-point buses are all low-entry ones.

In 2017, the Transportation department required all city buses to be low entry and low emission (at the minimum, Euro 4 emission standard-compliant) within three years. Today, fewer than 10 percent of them have complied.

Third, we need to make buses go faster by placing them, where possible, on dedicated lanes, with stations designed for fast boarding and alighting. Liberated from traffic and friction with private cars, bus rapid transit systems can carry as many passengers as light rail systems at a fraction of the cost of rail development. With faster travel, buses can make more round trips and carry more passengers daily.

What would it take to modernize all 5,000 city buses in Metro Manila? If we assume about $200,000 (P10.2 million) for a new low-entry Euro 6 bus, we need about $ 1 billion (P51 billion). If we add another $1 billion, we could build over 100 kilometers of BRT lanes. Imagine EDSA, C5, Quezon Avenue, Shaw Boulevard and Roxas Boulevard, with buses moving people with the same efficiency and convenience of a train system.

Spending $2 billion on improving bus services in Metro Manila may seem a lot, but it is one of the best transportation investments we can make today. By offering ready loan financing for a new bus fleet, we would motivate bus operators to shift to a safer, more productive and more sustainable business model. Five thousand modern buses with faster travel times would be able to serve over 4 million passengers a day.

We would all breathe cleaner air and have fewer illnesses. The elderly and persons with disability would have improved access to public transport. More people would leave their cars at home and use public transport. Metro Manila streets would be safer and less congested. With the prospect of significant, tangible results in less than three years, what are we waiting for? Robert Y. Siy isa development economist, city and regional planner, He can be reached at mobility matters. followed on Twitter@ Robert Rsiy