More commonly referred to as the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), the Public Transport Modernization Program (PTMP) is a program of government to make the country's public transportation system efficient and environmentally friendly by 2020. In essence, it was planned to phase out public utility vehicles (PUVs) that are at least 15 years old and replace them with safer, more comfortable, and more environmentally friendly alternatives. It covers jeepneys, buses, and other PUVs but is more prominent with PUJs.
We can already see some of them running in our city streets today. Of course, they’re easy to identify by the sheer difference in “look” as compared to our traditional jeepneys. That may be a good thing but sometimes we know many of us will miss our old jeepneys. If only we can retain them, development always calls for better things and being better, safer, more environmentally cleaner are necessary. The rear-entry, side-seating jeepneys with passengers facing each other are now outdated and we have to adapt to these new creatures plying our streets.
I’m just concerned with the size and capacity, however. Strictly speaking, there are no standard sizes for PUVs, though these are often dictated by the make, chassis, and body of the vehicle itself. That’s fine for buses and minibuses, most of which have standardized sizes anyway. But the jeepney is a unique item because it evolved over the years over half a century as a purely Filipino “invention,” if we can even call it that. The passenger seating is unique, and the “look” is peculiarly “Filipino” which persisted for decades despite pressures for change. It’s clearly the PUVMP which succeeded in converting it into its overall “look” which, frankly, is not even remarkable. Our old jeepneys still look better, always unique in their own way.
But something bothered me just at seeing all these “modern jeepneys” now plying our streets – something not quite right. Well, all the good things and niceties were placed in, most especially the “environmental requirements,” which I fully support anyway, but these took a lot of space, which I believe made the capacity much less than the old jeepneys. True, they’re cooler, safer, more comfortable, and “greener” but doing that is at the expense of space which decreases capacity. I don’t know if the operators are okay with these or are silently grumbling, but this need not be.
The reason for this is the intent of maintaining the “denomination” – that classification of PUVs that define our public transport system. In order to maintain the PUJ classification, we sacrificed a lot of things when we could have done the same by simply increasing the vehicle “size” while maintaining the capacity. But they would look like minibuses? So what? We’re a growing city and we need to upgrade their capacities, anyway, forget about “denominations” and all. In fact, our adherence to the lesser, less-efficient passenger vehicle sizes are actually economically wrong.
I have always said, when some people speak of being Singapore-like, then be Singapore like. You can’t find jeepney-like PUVs in Singapore, only buses and minibuses. So why don’t we just have minibuses instead of jeepneys? Let’s just continue calling them jeepneys!