Old jeepneys have until January to get off the road: official

Despite nationwide protests against the government’s planned jeepney modernization program, the phasing out of old jeepneys will continue, transportation officials said yesterday.

According to a report in the Manila Standard, operators of the ubiquitous (and cheap) mode of transport have only until Jan. 1. to get their vehicles off the road.

“The goal is to carry out what the president said — that by January, deteriorated vehicles will be phased out,” Transport Undersecretary Thomas Orbos said in Tagalog. “We will start with public transportation. That is the start of the modernization program.”

The Land Transportation Office (LTO), the office that regulates private vehicles, will also take cars that don’t pass emissions standards off the road by the first of the year.

READ: PH transportation groups protest jeepney modernization in 2-day strike

The jeepney modernization plan will take about 180,000 of the jeep-truck hybrids off the road in order to replace them with newer models prescribed by the government.

While the program is meant to decrease air pollution, jeepney drivers say that the program does not consider the costs operators and riders will have to bear.

“Not only will they get our jeep, they will also bury us in debt,” the coalition said in a Facebook post last September.

This plan is aligned with a “route rationalization plan.” Final details of the plan are being worked out by transportation regulators.

Currently, bus and jeep routes are only loosely regulated, allowing private operators to take whatever routes they want, and to pick up and drop off passengers almost anywhere they feel like it.

“On EDSA, there are now 4,000 buses when in reality it can only accommodate 1,000. That’s where route rationalization can make it more efficient and could help ease traffic,” Orbos said. The route rationalization plan would regulate public vehicle routes, and the number of jeepneys and buses that would be allowed on those routes.

Last month, President Rodrigo Duterte told jeepney drivers protesting the program: “If you don’t modernize, get out. You’re poor? Son of a bitch, live with the hardship and hunger, I don’t care.”