Department of Transportation Confirms Programme Is Progressing on Schedule, Which Is the Same Thing It Said Last Year

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

Jeepney Modernization Programme Enters Year Seven; Traditional Jeepney Drivers Enter Year Seven of Being Replaced Next Year

MANILA — The Department of Transportation confirmed this week that the Philippine Jeepney Modernization Programme is “progressing on schedule,” a phrase that has appeared in department press releases every year since the programme’s launch in 2017 and which now functions less as an assessment of progress and more as a ceremonial affirmation of optimism, like saying grace before a meal that may or may not arrive.

Under the programme, the iconic traditional Philippine jeepney — a vehicle descended from U.S. military jeeps, extended, decorated, and transformed into one of the most recognizable symbols of Filipino urban life — is being phased out in favor of modern, Euro-4 compliant vehicles with air conditioning, GPS tracking, and CCTV systems. The traditional drivers are required to consolidate into cooperatives and purchase the new vehicles, which cost between 1.4 and 2.5 million pesos, which is approximately the amount that traditional jeepney drivers earn every three to seven years, assuming conditions do not change, which they do, continuously, in directions that are not helpful to the calculation.

The Year-by-Year Timeline, Briefly

2017: Programme announced. Traditional jeepneys to be phased out. Drivers express concern. Government expresses confidence. 2018: Phase-out deadline extended. Drivers express concern. Government expresses confidence. 2019: Phase-out deadline extended again. New deadline set. Drivers express concern. Government expresses continued confidence. 2020: Global pandemic interrupts public transport entirely. Phase-out postponed. Everyone expresses concern. 2021: Phase-out resumes. Drivers express concern about financing. Government announces financing assistance. Financing assistance is described by drivers as “not quite what was described.” 2022, 2023, 2024: Variations on the same paragraph, filed and published. 2025: Phase-out deadline extended. 2026: Programme entering Year Seven. Traditional drivers entering Year Seven of being replaced next year. The pattern is now old enough to attend primary school.

The Drivers’ Position

The Alliance of Concerned Transport Organizations, which represents traditional jeepney operators and drivers, has raised consistent objections that have also been consistently noted and not resolved. Chief among them: the financing mechanisms available for new vehicle purchase require collateral that most traditional drivers do not have, because they are traditional jeepney drivers, not property owners. The cooperative structure required for programme participation demands organizational capacity that small, independent operators find difficult to assemble. And the route franchises being issued for modern jeepneys in some areas overlap with existing routes, which the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board describes as “rationalizing” and which drivers describe as “taking our routes.”

What the Modern Jeepney Offers

The new vehicles are, by objective measure, improvements in several dimensions. They are cleaner in emissions. They have air conditioning, which is not a luxury in Manila’s climate but rather a medical consideration. They have electronic payment systems, GPS, and CCTV. They are quieter. They are, generally speaking, better vehicles in technical terms. They are also, as anyone who has seen a traditional jeepney decorated with chrome horses, colored lights, patron saints, and an airbrushed portrait of the driver’s favorite action star will immediately note, significantly less interesting to look at.

The traditional jeepney is a Philippine cultural artifact, recognized internationally and referenced in every Philippine tourism campaign. The Department of Finance has not yet issued guidance on how to balance the cultural value of chromed horses against Euro-4 compliance standards. This guidance may be forthcoming.

Mother’s Day on the Route

Today is Mother’s Day. Traditional jeepney drivers across Metro Manila are working their routes as they have every day for years, including every previous Mother’s Day. Many of them have spent decades building livelihoods around vehicles that have been scheduled for phase-out every year since 2017. Their mothers, many of whom remember when the jeepney was introduced as a solution to a postwar transport problem and became instead a cultural institution, are at home, or at church, or being taken to lunch by children who drive those jeepneys. Happy Mother’s Day. The jeepney is still here. So are the drivers. For at least another year. Probably.

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The Cultural Preservation Question

No government agency has formally proposed preserving the traditional jeepney as a cultural artifact. No national museum has a collection policy for working jeepneys. No heritage designation process exists for vehicles that have shaped the visual identity of an entire nation’s cities for seventy years. The traditional jeepney is being phased out as a transport policy decision, which is defensible and arguably correct on environmental and safety grounds, and simultaneously being lost as a living cultural form, which will only become fully apparent after it is gone. Several private collectors have begun acquiring traditionally decorated jeepneys before they are retired. A few cultural organizations have raised preservation concerns. The Department of Education’s curriculum includes the jeepney as a cultural symbol. The Department of Transportation’s modernization timeline does not include a cultural impact assessment. Both departments are correct within their respective mandates. What falls between mandates tends to disappear.

Several traditional jeepney drivers who were interviewed for this article said the same thing in different formulations: they are not opposed to modernization. They are opposed to being modernized without the resources to modernize themselves. The distinction matters. A programme that phases out a livelihood without providing a funded path to a replacement livelihood is not modernization of the drivers. It is modernization of the roads, at the drivers’ expense. Both things can be true simultaneously. They are.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/