(2017) Pooling around
Long Story Short for Manila Standard
published 30 July 2017
LIKE most Metro Manila commuters, I happily discovered the wonders of app-based ride-hailing around two years ago. I felt I had no more energy to subject myself daily to the indignities of commuting via train or bus from Quezon City to Makati every day. I also felt I had had enough of the greedy, choosy, boorish taxi drivers who do their better behaved colleagues a disservice by acting the way they do.
Whatever extra money I could earn, I figured, should go to traveling decently. I worked hard. I at least deserved it. I do not mind scrimping on other things, like food. It is infinitely better to get to the workplace and back home with your sanity intact. If you’re lucky, you would have had enough rest to have quality time with loved ones or do more work when you do get to your destination.
I am sure many others made the same decision based on the above justification. This is why there is widespread anger: How dare the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board threaten to disallow the operation of Transport Network Vehicles when urban dwellers are evidently benefitting from the services.
Sure, the surges can be unbearable—on rainy days or nights, on payday Fridays, toward Christmas. You wonder what the factors are in the algorithm. Sometimes you are desperate to get home or go meet a friend that you book anyway, notwithstanding the high price.
But sometimes you decide to stay an extra hour or two at the office to wait for the prices to go down.
Sometimes you have a friend heading in the same direction and you split the fare so it does not hurt as much. Sometimes there’s a promo code you need to key in.
The important thing is that as a consumer, you have the choice. You get to decide which arrangements are negotiable and non-negotiable for you.
If the LTFRB is wondering why people are angry, it is this: Now that we have found ourselves able to make a choice—an ability that was in no way aided by the government—they threaten to take that choice away. This will again consign us to the despicable options the government has for us.
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But here’s another choice, we can make, in the meantime that our officials try to come up with a brilliant solution to this debacle: Pooling.
Uberpool or Grabshare is a cross between taking public transportation like the abominable MRT and being cocooned in a nice, comfortable vehicle you hire to take you to your destination.
The compromise goes beyond comfort; it’s about price, too. The difference between a standard ride and a pooled one, in my experience, does not go below P80.
It works the same way as a regular ride, but the system matches you up with another rider with pretty much along the same route.
Again, it’s a question of what you can and cannot live with.
Certainly I can live with a lower price. I can live with staying inside a vehicle for a few more minutes, picking up and dropping off others first, so long as I am not rushing to a meeting or dinner with a friend. I can tolerate another person, or two, inside the vehicle so long as they observe the basic standards of decency and hygiene. If it gets too much I can always have my earphones ready for my playlist or a movie or show saved in my computer. If I feel up to it I can get some reading or writing done. Or catch up on sleep.
I can shed paranoia and not mind having the other passengers know where I ride and get off—there is an even chance, after all, that I would get to see where they ride and get off—and usually I would not care.
If I am really lucky, sometimes the system does not assign anybody else to the ride, and I get to my destination just as comfortably and as exclusively for a much lower price.
A bonus: I don’t have to feel guilty about contributing to the traffic or emitting carbon and other pollutants into the air.
Of course, if I am in a hurry, or need to be at a certain place at a certain time, or if I anticipate that I would need my privacy, I can always choose to leave my house earlier than usual take the standard ride. And again that is the greatest thing about this entire set-up—options.
And again this is why I join the chorus of angry voices—a minority, the LTFRB says dismissively. We are incredulous at its inefficiency (did we hear they lost some papers?) and callousness (doing nothing about taxi drivers’ uncouth behavior).
Perhaps because our government officials drive their own cars, or better yet get driven around in official vehicles maintained by taxpayers’ money, they really could not care less. So woe to us who do not own a vehicle, we who must eke out a living anyway, and desire just a glimpse of comfort while keeping our sanity intact.
