Unravelling

Metro Cebu's public transport (Part 1)

If you're new to a certain foreign place, whether for a short visit or something longer, the first thing that you usually ask from the locals, is their current transport system. That is, if you're not rich enough to simply don't care and just hail a cab, rent a car, or buy yourself a new limousine altogether. But if you're Filipino, you'll fancy yourself riding the fast and shiny subway trains, metro's, double-decker buses, monorails, well … until the novelty wears off. Then you just use them everyday as part of the daily routine, yet still hoping someday, things like these will be available back home. Especially if you came from outside of  Metro Manila.

We don't often think of how transport system works and where they pass. Chances are, if you ask the locals, they don't have any idea either. Things like these we take for granted - of course we assume that the government studied these things and that they know better. And they usually do, unless they are those few exceptions who simply do things without studying. The problem is, sometimes solutions outlive the original problems. This adage is seldom remembered: "The solutions of today are the problems of tomorrow." Most solutions become irrelevant as time goes by. We keep using them because of habit. Like jeepney routes.

Of course, you don't usually ask these questions when riding a bus, a jeepney, or even a train. You use them in getting to your destination, period. There might be very rare moments when you wonder why they are aligned as such, but usually you shrug the idea off. In general, we accept present transport routes as they are, some of them lasting decades. There are changes in time, true, but in most cases, the basic setup outlasts your lifetime.

Take the case of Metro Cebu's jeepneys with routes such as "12D" or "22B" or any other number with a letter-suffix A, B, to sometimes reaching G or H. Imagine the number of permutations you can derive with this system. No wonder you have 4 routes going to Talamban, all using the same road - Gov. Cuenco Ave. Very few people remember that when this system was first introduced, there were no letter-suffixes. The routes were simply 1, 2, .. 12, .. 21. As time goes by, we start tinkering and innovating so we have 2 routes from Mandaue to Cebu City. Then we diversify further, and we have 21A, 21B, 22A, and 22B. Maybe there's even more except that Cebu City cut off portions of these routes, to the consternation of the drivers, not to mention the Mandaue City residents.

But how were the original routes identified? If we journey back in time, we'd realize that all jeepney routes originally were like spokes on a bicycle wheel with a hub in downtown Cebu City. If you're as old as I am now or older, you'll remember that all jeepney routes then originated from all points in the outskirts and went to Colon St., Magallanes St., or Carbon Market, many of them sharing the same corridor for 80-90% of their route length. Basak, Pardo, Inayawan, Bulacao - all of them used N. Bacalso Ave. with only their end points different. The same was true with the other places in the city in all directions of the compass.

Why everybody wants to go to Carbon is in itself a puzzlement, but that's another topic. Then we have Guadalupe-Colon, Urgelio-Colon, Lahug-Colon, etc. In those days, even out-of-town jeepneys from Danao, Compostela, Opon, Talisay wanted to go to Carbon Market. It can be explained by the basic topological urban design of almost all Philippine settlements, especially the old ones - triangular - civil government (municipio)-religious (church)-military (fort), with the town plaza and market in the middle or periphery. And the market is the meeting place of everybody, hence, transport radiates to and from there.

This is invariably true until that point in time when the cities/municipalities amalgate into a metropolis. Then the diversification of trip origins and destinations take place, and you now have people from Talisay who work in MEPZ, or residents of Tisa who work in Talamban. Who would want to still pass by Colon, or Carbon for that matter, much more, transfer jeepneys there. New jeepney routes emerged, of course. But the basic structure remains with the existing corridors of old, adding to congestion, and confusion.

A footnote to this observation is the insufficient stakeholders' participation in route-setting. You can ask CITOM and LTFRB how new routes are approved and who asked for these - the jeepney operators/drivers of course. We don't hear of passengers asking that routes should be assigned this or that way, and that won't happen if they want to because the system isn't designed for that. That doesn't seem to be a problem for a while, but after a decade or two, if you really look closely, existing routes can be dysfunctional.

Sometimes, what we need is a paradigm-shift, even if it's only on such mundane task as route-setting and route-naming. (To be continued)