Nov. 11-17, 2010
COMMENTARY
It is obvious that the present ultra-tightening of the watch of city police and city traffic enforcers to the passengers’ vans passing the national highway section of the Tagum City is the result of the conflict between Mayor Rey Uy and the arresting National Bureau of Investigation agents. And particularly, it was caused by the otherwise seen as the baffling, questionable arrest made by the still unidentified NBI agents to four traffic enforcers of the Tagum City Traffic Management Unit Thursday last week following the non-toleration of taxis at the city’s crossing and amidst the tighter campaign not to allow vans from picking up and unloading passengers in the city’s highway section. The mayor already said that apprehensions of violating vans will continue and without let up.
It is understable now that the non-toleration to the vans’ picking up and unloading of passengers in the city’s share of national highway has grounds as when the city’s traffic officers are now carrying a memorandum circular of the Land Transportation Franchising Regulatory Board in explaining to the van drivers, conductors and the passengers that their acts of flagging down and apprehensions have legal basis. The generic ground was already belabored by the city mayor in his recent radio interview with the DXDN Radyo Ukay Tagum- which is that he is just following the LTFRB rule under which comes his consequent protection of the legal buses not only covering those of the Metro Shuttle of his family but of other bus companies as well.
From the still running conflict comes the LTFRB’s Memorandum Circular 2007-007. The law or rule on vans as a mode of transportation harks back to 2004 and yet the riding public do not know about it, and know only of the longstanding non-toleration of the vans to pick up and unload passengers only in the Tagum City, as far as the Butuan City-Davao City route is concerned. The 2007 LFTRB circular is a consolidation of existing provisions that provide classification for all public land transport conveyances, including the AUV/VAN Express Service as new Public Land Transport Classification.
With the circular, now we know that a shroud of legality is clothed in the operations of passengers vans but the legal wrapping of this is so thin to appear like a lady’s mini skirt even while the beauty of this mode of transportation that sprang up sometime in 2004 was recognized by national transportation authorities. Specifically, in this LTFRB circular, Asian Utility Vehicles (AUVs) and vans that are given Garage-to-Terminal (GT) Express Service Operations are governed by the principle “Terminal to Terminal Only” and “No pick-up (loading), No drop-off (unloading)” while operating in a given route, and hence in the case of the Monvoda and Tagdasab vans, the loading/unloading areas should only be Monkayo and Davao City, and Butuan City and Davao City, respectively. It is thus clear that under this rule, these vans are allowed only to pick up and drop passengers in two terminals. The circular is followed by the city administration as when it allows Diwalwal vans to pick up and unload passengers in the city terminal,Totit as they only operate terminal to terminal, that is Diwalwal terminal at the other end. But the case of Monvoda and Tagdasab vans is different as van owners and operators have franchise or certificate of conveyance for the route Monkayo-Davao City and Butuan City-Davao City, respectively, and we learned, no one insisted they would only ply from or to Tagum terminal as quite obviously van owners want to eat the longest cake that would reach Davao City.
Ideally, based on this still unrevised/ un-amended LTFRB circular, the presently plying vans can only choose to operate one length of route, terminal to terminal, or choose one terminal among the town terminals that they are presently dropping. But since other local government units see collections of terminal fees from dropping vans, their chief executives choose to close their eyes and violate the LTFRB circular and recognize de facto and like legit this dropping of vans in their terminals.
Understandably, plying buses have their owners deeply knowing how much they have been paying taxes and fees to the government, shouldering the burden of high oil prices, labor, maintenance and insurance costs that they see that only the getting of the beyond-breakeven mark in economies of scale in the passengers’ market is the surefire formula in the longevity of transportation business. Many big bus companies in northern Mindanao like the Fortune and Super 5 bus companies that operated long before the Bachelor buses are seen in our streets have collapsed and were gobbled up by the monopolistic Bachelor company.
And now comes the tens of the hundreds of passengers’ vans competing upfront and in guerilla manner the buses on the same street. If each of the estimated 500 Monvoda and Tagdasab vans carry at least 10 passengers, the 5,000 passengers the vans carry in a day for an average of 100-kilometer travel at a per capita fare of P100, this would already wrest at a minimum P500,000 in a day or a minimum P15 million in a month worth of fares and incomes that should supposedly go the buses. Verily, the vans are giving the undue competition to the buses as vans are more agile, easy to pack while van drivers are more kaskaseros, speed maniacs to the high dangers of the risk-taking riding public. The stiff competition is the reason why small bus owners in the Diboa fold are hard up in modernizing their fleets which are often left to rot while running as rolling coffins and while their conductors in cahoots with the drivers, and sans the inspectors, are making bad field days to the small bus owners by their petty pilferages of coins and bills that remain in their pockets- to augment their measly wages that cannot feed their families and send their children to school.- Cha Monforte
Filed under: VANS in davao tagum, VANS in davao tagum
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