THE government’s recent P2 minimum fare hike mainly for jeepneys is grossly unfair to commuters as jeepneys are not improving efficiency in return, in total contrast to the 350,000-strong tricycle NCR Toda Coalition that experimented on finding solutions to modernize demo tricycles and be clean air-compliant with no government support.
Fare hikes are inflationary? Before fares were increased, alternative measures should have been explored first because next to food, transport accounts for the biggest share of the poor man’s budget, and fare hikes will definitely make more poor people poorer.
This is bad news for many urban- poor residents that have been relocated to the city outskirts like Pandi and San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, and in Cavite and Laguna towns, thus making commuting a costly ordeal.
Fare hikes will also bite into the pockets of the lower middle class, who could also slide into poverty. They also trigger pressures for higher wages, spiraling prices and unrest.
Assuming there are 10 million daily commuters nationwide, a P2 fare hike amounts to P20 million a day in additional expenses for commuters, or as much as P6 billion for 300 days, said Dave Garcia, a consultant of NCR Toda Coalition.
Tricycles can show the way? Jeepneys can learn from the 350,000-strong NCR (tricycle) Toda Coalition, headed by Ace Sevilla, from its own experiments on tricycle demo models to modernize, be clean-air-compliant, and fuel-efficient, without government support.
Although tricycles are the poorest among transport groups, with operators earning only P150-P350 per day and drivers taking home about the same amount, they pay for higher-priced gasoline as they are often ignored by the government, as they are excluded from the “Pantawid Pasada” fuel subsidy for jeepneys granting P5,000 per jeepney, or about P1 billion for 179,000 jeepneys in 2018, and another P20,000/jeepney or P3.58 billion for 2019.
Sevilla said these experiments called Tricyclean have reduced hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from 10,043 parts per million (ppm) to 120ppm, or a hefty 98.8-percent drop. At 120 ppm, this is 880 percent better than the 1,000 ppm emission standards beyond July 1, 2017, under DENR Administrative Order 4 of 2015. Carbon monoxide was also reduced by 99.967 percent from 6.09 percent to 0.002 percent, or 124,900 percent better than emission standards of 2.5 percent.Shifting to much-improved four-stroke engines with super maintenance could double mileage, resulting in fuel savings by 50 percent, which means if gasoline is at P58/liter, the effective price is half or P29/liter.
Maintenance can absorb fuel prices. What’s lacking in the jeepney modernization is proper “maintenance,” which can prevent toxic emissions and achieve fuel savings by 10 percent to 30 percent, thus diesel at P48/liter can mean savings of P4.8-P14.40/liter, more than enough to absorb rising fuel prices. If tricycle experiments can do it, jeepneys can also do the same with proper education. Vehicles need maintenance like proper lubrication, filters, etc. If the government can give subsidies to jeepneys, tricycles deserve something similar, not necessarily in cash but in kind.
Warranties for jeepney modernization are only for three years, leaving the remaining four-year amortization unprotected. This can be solved with maintenance, keeping engines good as brand new till the end of amortization.
Clean air is priority. Many jeepney groups oppose modernization owing to the high costs of vehicle replacement from P1.4 million to P2.4 million, particularly for small jeepneys in less-lucrative routes. As banks, vehicle suppliers and operators themselves are not ready to replace 200,000 jeepneys instantly, perhaps this can be done in phases, starting with lucrative routes plied by big jeepneys.
But what must not be compromised is clean air. A joint study by Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research headed by Alfred Wiedensohler, PhD, and Researchers for Clean Air (RESCueAIR) Philippines involving local university experts led by Dr. Mylene Cayetano, showed that black carbon emissions taken from Katipunan-Ateneo and Manila Taft-LaSalle areas average about 94 micrograms (µg) per day, about 2,250 percent to 9,300 percent more than the 1-4 µg levels in Leipzig, Germany.
One jeepney, therefore, emits black carbon 2,250 to 9,300 times emissions of a German Euro-standard vehicle. If there are 200,000 jeepneys nationwide, their BC-emissions are equivalent to the BC-emissions of 450 million to 1.86 billion German vehicles.
Fair demand, not fare demand. With fuel prices rolling back, the government should rethink the fare hike demands, which please only one sector but have serious repercussions. Instead, support should be channeled to where it will count most.
Apparently, it is neither fare-hikes nor costly cash-subsidies that dissipate fast without impact that will make a difference, but funding meaningful programs like Tricyclean, a clean-air education program blending theory with actual training materials, which is a fair demand.
Moreover, education highlights the importance of maintenance, which can evolve into maintenance service centers as supplemental livelihoods.
Tricycles deserve all the support. Compared to jeepneys, tricycles do not rally against the government, but are still continuously ignored. They were also bullied into poverty and absorbed the dumping of technologies, like Retrofit technology of Colorado, LPG conversion kits, shift from two-stroke to four-stroke engines, and now the e-trikes, costing P350,000-P450,000 each, raising amortizations to P480/day, more than their boundary incomes. Without government support, and being blamed often for being most pollutive, tricycles were forced to launch “Tricyclean” to experiment and seek solutions on their own. Jeepneys can indeed learn a lot from tricycles.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com