DOTr officials commute: Experience is the best teacher

“Experience is the best teacher” is a timeless adage that has found a timely application in the latest directive from the Department of Transportation (DOTr).

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Acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez has ordered all undersecretaries and assistant secretaries—along with top officials from attached agencies such as the LTO, LT-FRB, LRTA, PNR, and MRT-3—to take public transportation at least once a week. The goal is to gather insights from the experiences of commuters and use those to propose improvements to our long-troubled transportation system.

The directive, which took effect on Sept. 17, came after Secretary Lopez’s own harrowing three-hour commute to his office—a trip he described as “like a war zone,” with passengers scrambling for a ride, and no system in sight. That day on the ground may have convinced him that too many transportation policies are made far from the realities they’re supposed to fix.

This is a well-intentioned and even commendable new policy, but it raises a troubling question: Why did it need to be a policy in the first place?