Planners want to replace the legacy Philippine jeepney vehicle fleet with “environmentally friendly models”. But the drivers are up in arms at the new units, “that operate through electricity or more environment-friendly fuel” at 2.4 to 2.6 million pesos each which are much more expensive than current vehicles costing from 200 to 600 K pesos.
This, as the DOTr said it shall reduce reliance on private vehicle use and move toward environmentally-sound mobility solutions, and shall develop and promote high quality public transportation systems.
As stressed by retired University of the Philippines Los Baños professor Teodoro Mendoza, who wrote a paper on addressing the “blind sides” of the PUVMP, the program seeks to replace old PUVs, including jeepneys, with modern ones.
“Modern PUVs,” he said are more environment-friendly and fuel-efficient to provide Filipinos with safer, comfortable, and reliable public transportation, while also mitigating the “hazards” of “inefficient and smoke-belching PUVs.
Inquirer
Drivers think it’s a conspiracy to replace small owner driven vehicles with corporations who alone can afford the expensive eco or electric powered vehicles. “Only big corporations with single consolidated franchises have the financial capacity to purchase and fully comply with the current PUVMP schemes.” It’s a case study in how the war on carbon works in poor countries. What may sound great in California may not be so appealing in Manila.
The theme of cost vs carbon runs through the whole jeepney replacement debate. “Brightly painted Jeepney public transport trucks are an iconic symbol of the Philippines, but minibus firm boss Freddie Hernandez backs plans to force them off the road.”
“We saw the benefits of modernising our units in terms of reducing their carbon emissions,” said Hernandez, the chair of a transport service cooperative in Metro Manila, an urban sprawl of 16 cities.
“If the environment benefits from it, the public will benefit from it as well in the long run.”
Other public transport leaders, however, say the programme is saddling them with unmanageable costs and will upend the livelihood of some 61,000 traditional jeepney drivers, as they face a looming deadline to modernise their fleets.
Fiji Times
Environmentalism is much more appealing to a rising middle class than to the poor. “Eco” = Whole Foods. “Carbon” = Dollar Tree. The question is whether environmentalism’s appeal can be preserved in economic decline. The challenge for environmentalists is to find a pathway consistent with a rapidly rising GDP and standard of living. In William Manchester’s phrase the unlamented Dark Ages were “a world lit only by fire”. Will an eco future lit only by windmills be its counterpart?