Dangerous PH transport system

Just recently, media headlines bled with tragedy as the country’s transport chaos turned fatal, claiming lives from the deadly SCTEX wreck to the NAIA Terminal 1 crash, where concrete and steel failed to protect, but instead wrote obituaries.

- MYRNA M. VELASCO

Let’s be brutally honest, those headline-grabbing fatalities are just the tip of the wreckage because on Philippine roads, accidents don’t make the news daily, but they sure as hell make the body count.

With that level of dysfunction, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) needs more than an administrative order and prayers, it will need to get its act together because it’s no longer just about apocalyptic traffic that we’re enduring on a daily basis; it’s about a public transport system so fragmented that it’s now collecting lives like spare change.

And let’s call it what it is—no one in DOTr or government history has had the spine so far to tackle the messy traffic situation head-on, leaving us stuck in a national punchline where if there were a global race for worst congestion, the Philippines would take gold even without moving an inch.

Several public transport drivers flat-out admitted that at the LTO, you can still buy your way to a license — that if you fail the exam, you just pay the right fixer and you’re good to go. Efficient driving skills will not be that necessary—never mind if you can’t distinguish the brake from the gas pedal.

Sure, the LTO is inclined to announce a purge on fixers, but on the ground, drivers say the dirty deals never really stopped—these just got quieter, sneakier, and had also gotten more expensive. What will it take then to end that dirty practice for good? A legitimate and tough crack-down from the government because lip service alone won't fix that damn thing.