The Department of Transportation’s (DOTr) bus augmentation program, supposed to address the gaps in public transport under the general community quarantine (GCQ), reported on Friday having served only 4,000 passengers in four days—raising concerns about the efficiency of the program.
But for the department, the actual goal is to deliver a “higher level of service” where fixed, scheduled dispatches ensure predictable travel for commuters now returning to work.
As per the DOTr, around 4,383 people were able to avail themselves of the bus augmentation program intended to offset the reduced capacity of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT 3).
The 90-strong fleet of buses are deployed for fifteen hours a day, 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., at an interval of five minutes. By these figures, this means the service averages around 1,095 passengers a day.
Explanation
Assuming for 180 trips a day if dispatch is regular, each bus carries only six passengers per trip, or around 72 people moved an hour.
In a separate statement sent to the Inquirer, Undersecretary for Railways Timothy John Batan said “While it has been observed during the first few days of GCQ that the MRT’s combined trains and bus augmentation capacity [have] been more than sufficient to address demand, it has also been observed that demand and ridership has been gradually increasing. This increase in demand is expected to continue as more economic activity is restarted in the coming days, and as additional feeder bus routes are activated.”
Batan said the department entered a service contract with the bus operators “for the purpose of ensuring that the MRT 3 has a sufficient number of buses that will be able to deliver a high level of service to passengers (i.e., fixed dispatch every five minutes).”
“If the bus augmentation wasn’t there, all the passengers that rode the buses would have [ridden] the trains, which means more people would have lined up to ride the trains. The purpose of bus augmentation is to ‘distribute’ passengers between the transport mode that is being augmented (i.e., trains) and the transport mode that is being used to augment (i.e., buses),” he explained.
Bus operators
Since Monday, the DOTr has been under scrutiny after thousands were stranded in east Manila where public transport was scarce, following the GCQ.
According to the DOTr it is paying each bus operator P70 per kilometer (actual trips taken) to ferry passengers across four stops: North Avenue, Quezon Avenue, Ayala and Taft.
That’s a 17-kilometer route, or around P2,380 per round trip.
Loading and unloading stations “will be gradually expanded, pursuant to the DOTr’s phased, calibrated approach in restarting Metro Manila’s public transport network,” the department said.
The service-contract bus operators were grantees of special permits from the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board for the eventual Edsa carousel route.
Based on ridership trends observed during the first few days of GCQ operations, MRT 3 will review its capacity supply, including the fixed intervals at which it dispatches augmentation buses.