DOTr confirms trajectory toward eventual compliance remains strong, notes that not having started is different from having failed to start
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
MANDALUYONG CITY, PHILIPPINES — The Department of Transportation marked the seventh anniversary of the Jeepney Modernization Program on Thursday with a press conference at which Secretary Arsenio Lacuesta-Domingo confirmed that the program remained “substantially on track,” that its goals were “fundamentally achievable within a revised extended timeline,” and that the zero modern jeepneys currently in service under the program should be understood as representing “the ground floor of an exponential curve” rather than evidence of what critics have been calling, with increasing directness, a comprehensive policy failure.
The Program’s History
The Jeepney Modernization Program was launched in 2017 with the stated goal of replacing Metro Manila’s fleet of approximately 55,000 traditional jeepneys with modern Euro 4-compliant vehicles within three to five years. It has survived four transport secretaries, three presidential administrations, eleven revised implementation timelines, forty-seven stakeholder consultation workshops, a pandemic, multiple transport strikes, two Supreme Court challenges, and a period in 2022 during which the program’s official status was listed on DOTr’s website as “active (under review)” for seven consecutive months, which no one at the department could explain when asked.
The program’s current status, according to the most recent DOTr monitoring report, is that 4,200 franchise holders have submitted modernization applications, 1,800 have received conditional approvals, 340 have secured vehicle purchase financing, 47 have taken delivery of modern units, and zero of those 47 units are in active service as accredited modernized jeepneys, because the route accreditation process has a separate queue that is currently processing applications submitted in 2021.
“The pipeline is full,” Secretary Lacuesta-Domingo said, gesturing at a PowerPoint slide showing the numbers above rendered as a funnel graphic. “What you see at the bottom of the funnel is not emptiness. It is the collection point, and the collection point is filling. When the collection point is full, service will commence. This is how funnels work.”
Drivers and Operators React
The traditional jeepney operators who have been navigating the program’s requirements for seven years expressed a range of views, most of which centered on financial exhaustion. A modern Euro 4 jeepney costs between P2.2 million and P2.8 million, compared to P180,000 to P400,000 for a reconditioned traditional unit. The DOTr’s concessional financing scheme offers rates that transport groups say remain unaffordable for the majority of small operators who own one or two units and depend on daily fare income to service any debt.
“They want us to borrow P2.5 million at terms our income cannot support, to replace a vehicle that is paid off and working, so that seven years from now when our loan matures we can own a modern jeepney that is seven years old,” said operator Federico Santos-Ramirez, who has been attending modernization briefings since the program launched and has concluded that his retirement will precede his modernization. “I do not think they have thought about the math.”
The Manila Times reported that the World Bank, which provided technical assistance to the program’s original design, has not been formally consulted on any of the subsequent timeline revisions and that its program assessment report, submitted in 2021, recommended “fundamental restructuring” of the financing mechanism as a precondition for realistic implementation. The DOTr acknowledged receiving the report and said it was “under ongoing consideration.”
The Secretary Looks Ahead
Secretary Lacuesta-Domingo said the program would achieve “meaningful scale” by 2027, a date that represents a ten-year span from the original 2017 launch and five years beyond the most recently published revised completion timeline. He said this was “not a delay” but “an organic timeline evolution reflecting the complexity of transforming an ecosystem.”
Asked whether he expected to remain as transport secretary until 2027 and therefore be personally accountable for the outcome, Secretary Lacuesta-Domingo said he hoped to serve the administration for as long as he was useful and that he had full confidence in the program’s eventual success regardless of who was overseeing it when success eventually arrived.
The 47 modern jeepney units currently awaiting route accreditation have been parked in a depot in Valenzuela for an average of eight months. Their owners are servicing vehicle loans on units generating zero fare income. The route accreditation queue is currently processing applications submitted in March 2021. The program is on track. The funnel, Secretary Lacuesta-Domingo reiterated, is filling.
The Confederation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Association, which has been negotiating with DOTr over modernization implementation terms since the program’s launch, released a statement on the seven-year anniversary saying that its members had lost an estimated P12 billion in collective income and asset value navigating the program’s uncertainty, that 18 percent of small operators who were active in 2017 had left the transport sector entirely, and that the 47 modern units sitting in the Valenzuela depot represented “the full harvest of seven years of promises.” The statement requested a suspension of the franchise consolidation requirements that had been used to pressure operators into the modernization program and a return to open consultation. The DOTr said it was reviewing the request in the context of its ongoing stakeholder engagement process. The funnel, Secretary Lacuesta-Domingo’s office confirmed in a separate statement, was filling.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/jeepney-modernization-year-seven-zero-jeepneys-modernized-on-track/