For Christmas, I want peace on Earth – that and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
And if Santa’s feeling extra generous, I’d also want to have order in our streets. My back hurts like crap from the perennial traffic, and it doesn’t do my blood pressure any good to have people cut in front of me like Atty. Topacio parrying Leah Navarro.
And the buses? Oh, don’t even get me started. I often find myself dreaming of driving one those monster trucks and just plowing through these inconsiderate morons.
Sitting down and exclusively chatting recently with Elma Arboleras and Rodel de Guzman, developers of a British Inventors Awards-winning creation called the iBUS (Intelligent Bus Utility System) served to reinforce some long-held notions about buses as a mode of public transportation, and why it continues to fail in our country. Commuters prefer to endure the rush-hour MRT than ride a half-empty bus. “It’s better to suffer a few minutes on the MRT than waste hours on the bus,” says a friend.
Truth to tell, hardly anyone feels sympathy for buses except when someone sets fire to them. Maybe.
Anyway, simply put, iBUS seeks to restore order to the chaos through one surprising measure – controlling (or at least monitoring) when and where buses open their doors to load and unload its passengers.
Set to be field-tested next month for its potential client (the MMDA) the iBUS also brings to fore the shameless practices of bus drivers that we are so familiar with, and will try to put a stop to them.
Bus drivers stop their multi-ton vehicles wherever they want to, whether it’s in the middle of the road or a bus stop. Honking incessantly doesn’t help; some of these idiots seem to relish aggravating other people and even flash a smile as you seethe with anger. I’ve noticed that giving them the finger gets a little rise out of them, though. Years ago, I had a heated exchange of profanities with a bus driver who appeared intent on running me off the road. The colorful myriad of words would have made anyone blush. After the moron sped off, I remembered my grandparents and my mom were in the vehicle with me. I felt that small. When road rage dissipates, embarrassment and guilt follow.
So you must understand why there’s personally never any love lost for this mode of transportation.
The iBUS will hopefully bring us out of the dark ages of asinine bus drivers. Through a chip installed in each bus, offending drivers who throw the doors open in the middle of EDSA to let passengers in and out will be flagged with a violation. Same thing goes for those not properly positioned in bus bays, and those overstaying in the stops. Non-contact violations like this are expected to be transmitted and collected in a traffic operations center.
Well and good. But doesn’t it say something about us that we need a “big brother” to tell us what to do? Why don’t bus drivers just do what is right and proper because it is right and proper?
Arboleras says she has interviewed a lot of bus drivers and actually is sympathetic to their plight. She maintains that bus drivers are merely doing what they can to eke out a living. The flawed “boundary” system – which gives drivers and their conductors a percentage of the actual earnings for the day – helps explain the urgency (manners be damned) and recklessness. More passengers mean more money.
So, can the iBUS system work without rectifying this outdated, improper practice? Perhaps. De Guzman is confident that even as their invention will bring order to the streets, it will also help level the playing field among the bus drivers. Crucially, the iBUS system, with its personalized chip per bus (which also helps program which bus stops it can use), will also help weed out colorum units (estimated at a staggering 46 percent of some 12,000 buses).
Still, we go back to the basic issue of doing what’s right for its own sake. I hate it when drivers hide behind the excuse that it’s all about making a living. And what about the rest of us? Don’t we also make a living? Rodel de Guzman was right in saying that inconsiderate drivers keep us from our work – our own livelihood. What makes them more important than us?
Can you imagine how many total hours in our lives have been wasted just passing through EDSA? The slowdown in Guadalupe (both for north- and south-bound directions), for instance, is just caused by bus drivers who occupy three, four lanes. As soon as you pass this mad scramble for passengers, traffic speeds up again. What an injustice. People are jailed for wasting taxpayers’ money; same thing should apply to those who waste taxpayers’ time.
After all, money can be earned. You can’t earn back time.