FLYING BUSES
Disciplining erring bus companies may be a difficult and futile thing to do. A bus company can go around the revocation of its franchise by simply maintaining a second company plying the same route. But, transport officials are not blind to these attempts to circumvent regulations. It is suspected most of them are in the payola of these bus firms. It is also reported that several judges get weekly gasoline ratios from bus firms, which explains why no cases against these firms have really prospered in the salas of these judges. Most traffic officials, including the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) are openly known to receive regular tongs from bus firms and this is why their drivers do not hesitate to violate traffic laws.
Some officials of the MMDA must be hallucinating when they express confidence that they can enforce an order limiting jeepneys and buses to special lanes on the public highways. For the buses - EDSA in particular. No way will Metro Manila's undisciplined drivers of PUJs and PUBs obey this simplistic directive, unless the MMDA can post one honest traffic aide at 100-meter intervals along EDSA.
The late Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson tried this solution once and failed. He felt so frustrated he considered putting up spiked dividers to force the defiant drivers to keep to their lanes, but the good mayor was stopped by the courts, declaring Lacson's plan as illegal.
What is it then that turns the Filipino into a monstrous anarchist once he gets behind the steering wheel?
Disciplining erring bus companies may be a difficult and futile thing to do. A bus company can go around the revocation of its franchise by simply maintaining a second company plying the same route. But, transport officials are not blind to these attempts to circumvent regulations. It is suspected most of them are in the payola of these bus firms. It is also reported that several judges get weekly gasoline ratios from bus firms, which explains why no cases against these firms have really prospered in the salas of these judges. Most traffic officials, including the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) are openly known to receive regular tongs from bus firms and this is why their drivers do not hesitate to violate traffic laws.
Some officials of the MMDA must be hallucinating when they express confidence that they can enforce an order limiting jeepneys and buses to special lanes on the public highways. For the buses - EDSA in particular. No way will Metro Manila's undisciplined drivers of PUJs and PUBs obey this simplistic directive, unless the MMDA can post one honest traffic aide at 100-meter intervals along EDSA.
The late Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson tried this solution once and failed. He felt so frustrated he considered putting up spiked dividers to force the defiant drivers to keep to their lanes, but the good mayor was stopped by the courts, declaring Lacson's plan as illegal.
What is it then that turns the Filipino into a monstrous anarchist once he gets behind the steering wheel?
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