Surviving Carmageddon in Manila

We were going way too fast with the radio on way too loud. When the pop station we’d been listening to finally gave way to static, the driver scanned the airwaves until he found a morning talk-radio program that he liked. The DJ and his guest were discussing traffic. But it wasn’t just the usual reports of collision, construction, and congestion—it was an in-depth discussion of an altercation that occurred the day before, when a municipal traffic enforcer had lost his temper with an “arrogant” motorist. “Be patient,” the host advised his listeners. “You never know if someone is carrying something heavy inside.” “Right you are,” his guest replied. “Our enforcers are people, too.”

Half asleep in the front passenger seat, I suddenly perked up. My fellow travelers and I had caught an early trip in hopes of beating traffic, but that traffic was nothing like the traffic being discussed on the radio. We were on a two-lane highway in rural Palawan, the Philippines’ so-called “last frontier” and a long way from the radio station in Manila. I was on my way to visit long-time collaborators in a remote village, but afterward I would depart for Manila to begin a study of traffic there. Why, I had to ask, did the driver tune in for this discussion?

“It’s like a drama,” he mused, likening Manila’s traffic to a soap opera. Then he added with a smirk, “Here we just avoid hitting the carabao, but there they get out of their cars to fight in the street.”¹

Mega city, Mega traffic

As with many cities in the Global South, Manila’s urban infrastructure is a palimpsest of indigenous landscapes, colonial designs, nationalist ambitions, neoliberal experiments, and foreign-aid agendas. Pre-colonial Manila was a trade entrepôt at the mouth of the Pasig River, where mobility depended largely on waterways and vast mangrove forests tempered the risk of floods. From Spain, via its American colonies, came central squares with grids of narrow roads radiating outward. Under U.S. occupation, colonial authorities partially implemented a master plan by famed American architect Daniel Burnham. Since much of the city was destroyed during the Second World War, postcolonial governments have struggled to meet the needs of a rapidly growing urban population by accepting loans (and policy input) from Korea, Japan, the World Bank, and other international sources.

With some 20 million people in the greater metropolitan area, the Philippine capital is now one of the most densely populated cities on earth, and its drivers are said to be the world’s most discontented. Theorist Neferti Tadiar observed in 2006 that Metro Manila “is a labyrinthine, megalopolitan fortress of foreclosure,” where “almost all the main arteries of the metropolis have become virtually enclosed corridors of free-flowing vehicular traffic.” Her words accurately describe Manila as I found it last summer, with one exception: the traffic does not flow freely.

Navigating Manila may not always feel like a scene from a soap opera, but it is maddeningly slow on an average day and dramatically worse when it rains (which it does, a lot). Private car ownership has surged in recent years, as has urban sprawl. Mass transit systems remain an underfunded patchwork of private cooperatives, public-private partnerships, and state-owned corporations overseen by a tangle of government agencies with overlapping mandates.

From viral videos of road rage to flood-induced “carmageddon,” Manila’s traffic woes feature prominently in national conversations—and not just as a source of schadenfreude in the provinces. During his presidential campaign, Rodrigo Duterte frequently invoked the “traffic crisis” in order to discredit the incumbent Liberal Party. (He also, as he is prone to do, called Pope Francis a “son of a bitch” for causing severe traffic delays during his 2015 visit.) Promises to address the crisis have since remained central to the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program, and the president has even pushed for “emergency powers” to intervene in the transport sector.

Last year, amid mounting pressure to take more decisive action, the Department of Transportation announced a plan to “modernize” public utility vehicles (PUVs) and crack down on so-called “colorum” PUVs that operate illegally. Although the plan has support from a number of important constituencies, it has sparked controversy because of its existential implications for the jeepney, a uniquely Filipino mode of transport that is as iconic as it is ubiquitous.

Jeepneys on the Outs

Jeepneys emerged in the post-war years as a resourceful repurposing of leftover US military jeeps. Today, they are fabricated in workshops across the country, and many are customized with religious imagery, sports logos, cartoon characters, and patriotic symbols, adding color and character to what are otherwise very spartan designs. The passenger compartment is squat, with a single door at the back and two benches facing a narrow central aisle. Fabric flaps or curtains are fastened in the paneless windows for use against rain and sun. Passengers tend to sit as close to the door as possible, making it a challenge to board a jeepney that is already crowded.

Due to my height, I basically have to crawl over people until I find an open seat, at which point I can rarely sit up straight, let alone turn to see out the window. This is a problem because jeepneys have few regular stops on their routes, pausing instead wherever passengers flag them down or ask the driver to stop. Fortunately for me, fellow passengers are always willing to alert me (and the driver) to my destination—and even without a lost American on board, passengers frequently cooperate in relaying fares and messages to the driver.

While jeepneys are not generally used for long-distance commuting, plenty of Manileños spend an hour or more in one going to and from school or work. Many passengers hold small towels to their faces in an attempt to filter out the dust, exhaust fumes, and odors that they are inevitably exposed to along the way, often while guarding small children in their laps and/or bags of groceries between their feet.

Discomforts aside, jeepneys are the most popular and economical mode of transit in Manila. A 2015 study estimated that more than seventy percent of the city’s commuters regularly use a jeepney, often in combination with a bus, tricycle, or train. But one should not mistake the jeepney’s sheer ubiquity for a consensus about its desirability. In calling for a gradual “phase-out” in favor of more standardized, brand-name mini buses, the PUV Modernization Program has proven extremely controversial among jeepney drivers and operators. It has also drawn support from a range of constituencies eager for cleaner, more advanced and accessible options.

Technocrats for Change

The PUV Modernization Program is not just about upgrading vehicles. At least on paper, it also aims to streamline routes, regularize stops, and organize drivers into cooperatives. Among the program’s strongest proponents is the Metro Manila Development Authority, an interjurisdictional agency established in 1975 to coordinate public works and planning in the metro area.

When I visited the Authority’s offices on a muggy August afternoon, I encountered planners and engineers eager to apply the latest technologies to the city’s transport challenges. They took me to see their video-surveillance command center, where teams of remote enforcers monitor row upon row of live footage, watching for violations and issuing citations. Nearby, another team monitors the Authority’s telephone hotlines and social media sites, taking reports of crashes and responding to complaints about rude or corrupt traffic enforcers. I was told that many of the violations and complaints involve “undisciplined” jeepney and bus drivers stopping wherever they please.

In recent years, the Authority has sought to improve its reputation and make the case for “discipline.” To do so, it has sponsored videos and other media that praise its traffic enforcers, shame arrogant drivers, and promote the cause of PUV modernization. From the Authority’s technocratic perspective, the jeepney is a poorly regulated, technologically primitive, and resource-inefficient form of transportation—a perfect foil for the progress and discipline that the agency is mandated to promote.

What Makes a ‘Modern’ PUV?

In terms of the vehicles themselves, the new PUVs will look much less like jeeps and much more like small buses that feature wider aisles, higher ceilings, side doors, surveillance cameras, and “Euro 4”-compliant engines, if not electric ones. This latter provision has heartened environmental health advocates, who worry about the city’s worsening air quality. Among Southeast Asian cities, Manila has the highest annual mean concentration of particulate matter of less than 10 microns in diameter, and its average concentration of particles of less than 2.5 microns regularly clocks in at several times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit. The vast majority of this pollution comes from motor vehicles, a fact that has led advocacy groups like the Coalition of Clean Air Advocates of the Philippines to sue government agencies for failing to enforce emission standards.

To learn more about Manila’s air pollution, I visited Dr. Mylene G. Cayetano, a professor at the University of the Philippines, founder of RESearchers for Clean AIR (RESCueAir), and one of the country’s leading air-quality scientists. In a 2017 study, she and her collaborators found that “jeepneys […] are responsible for 94% of total roadside emitted refractory particle mass.” Their findings have helped galvanize support for PUV modernization, but Dr. Cayetano was careful not to endorse the program as a panacea. She stressed that Euro 4 is no longer the highest standard, that fuel itself remains a concern, and that there is no guarantee that any standard will be consistently enforced.

Nor is the environmental health community alone in its cautious support of PUV modernization. Without ramps or any other accessible features, jeepneys are notoriously challenging for many persons with disabilities. Disability rights groups have called for the new fleet of PUVs to include a variety of accessibility features (such as lifts or ramps, audiovisual announcements, and space for securing wheelchairs) and for their roll-out to include sensitivity training for drivers.

But some of the new PUV models released in the initial roll-out did not even have ramps, and uncertainties remain about the specific accessibility requirements for the fleet as a whole. Over coffee and donuts next to a very pedestrian-unfriendly intersection in Quezon City, disability rights advocate Dr. Liza Martinez explained that, from her perspective, cultural change is every bit as important as changes in laws and infrastructure. What use is a remodeled jeepney, she asked, if the driver won’t stop for a person in a wheelchair?

This is something that her colleague, Abner Manlapaz, has experienced firsthand. I met him and other members of the Philippine Coalition on UNCRPD amid their efforts to prepare for a United Nations review of the country’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Their efforts require a comprehensive understanding not just of the transportation sector, but also of regional planning and social policy. Manila’s mobility barriers implicate a host of larger societal imperatives, including healthcare, education, and employment. From the standpoint of inclusive mobility, even a thoroughly modern PUV is only as good as the system in which it operates.

Modernization as Corporatization

Jeepneys today are produced domestically, many in relatively small workshops, and most jeepney operations involve a small number of vehicles. Drivers generally earn modest wages, especially those who have to pay “boundary” fees to the vehicle’s owner. But many drive their own vehicles and have at least some measure of autonomy in determining their hours and routes. With a cooperative model envisioned for the “modernized” PUV sector, labor activists suspect that the result will be a corporate-style consolidation similar to how inter-city buses already operate.

Thanks in part to government subsidies, the new PUVs are supposed to be assembled in the Philippines, but they are being designed by foreign corporations and sold at a cost nearly three times that of the average jeepney. While the PUV Modernization Program includes subsidies to help operators purchase new vehicles, Elmer “Ka Bong” Labog of the labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno told me that “the expensive and unreliable new vehicles are expected to force the operators to abandon the jeepney industry, while those who will take up the challenge will be walking into a debt trap.”

As a result, members of PISTON, a labor union representing drivers and operators of jeepneys, fear that modernization will “displace and dispossess” its members while further casualizing labor across the industry. Since the program was announced, PISTON president George San Mateo has led two brief national strikes of jeepney drivers, prompting his arrest for allegedly violating the Public Service Act.

This resistance has helped delay the roll-out of new PUVs, and as a PISTON representative assured me, “we are confident that we can out-survive the present administration.” But transport officials also seem determined, insisting that the retirement of old jeepneys will proceed as planned. What this means for the drivers of these unique vehicles—and for their millions of passengers—remains to be seen.

Manila’s Many Futures

Manila’s contemporary infrastructures both reveal and obscure the city’s history. Competing with massive coastal reclamation projects are efforts to restore the mangroves and their buffering capacities. Along 19th-century tranvia routes run the city’s clogged thoroughfares, but also the expanding metro system. Burnham’s plan for a “beautified” Manila continues to shape the imagination of contemporary planners even as the city itself has been built and rebuilt over the course of a century.

Jeepneys, too, have a lot to say about the past and present of Philippine society. For some, they represent an old modality, one incompatible with the levels of efficiency, standardization, and accessibility that a modern, world-class city demands. For others, jeepneys are a powerful expression of resourcefulness and independence—a transformation of a belligerent, colonial technology into one that serves working-class people. And then there are those, including many drivers themselves, for whom the jeepney debate represents an opportunity to push for systemic change.

Can planners promote better vehicle designs while sustaining the creativity, mobility, and livelihoods that jeepneys have enabled? Is the “modernization” of jeepneys but a wresting back of a means of production that has somehow remained largely in working people’s hands? Will the push for modern PUVs help deliver cleaner environmental standards, better organized routes, and a culture of inclusion?

These questions, and many more, all seem prescient amid the layers of complexity, history, and possibility that comprise a megalopolis like Manila. If nothing else, they give you something to think about while inching along Epifano de los Santos Avenue at midnight on a Tuesday.

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Featured image: Traffic congestion and the MRT train along Epifano de los Santos Avenue in Manila. Photo by Noah Theriault, August 2018.

Noah Theriault teaches anthropology, political ecology, and Southeast Asian studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His long-term research examines the micropolitics of indigeneity and environmental regulation on Palawan Island in the Philippines. His new project asks how Manila’s “traffic crisis” interacts with social inequality, technocratic authority, and political subjectivity. He would like to thank Pamela Cajilig, Dinna Dayao, Danielle Guillen, Sheilah Napalang, Shiela Saturo-Quingco, and Joshua Zapanta for their assistance with his preliminary research for this essay. Twitter. Contact.

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1. These translations from Tagalog are my own. ↩