Formalising the jeepney industry in the Philippines – A confirmatory thematic analysis of key transitionary issues

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Abstract

Jeepneys are paratransit vehicles which constitute the bulk of urban transport in many cities in the Philippines. There are around 179,000 jeepneys of which 90% are fifteen years or older. However, this is not without so many other issues on the road. To address this, the government issued a landmark policy enabling the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), a transformational large-scale initiative focused on land-based public transport in which the majority are jeepneys. The program brings about a comprehensive reform covering new policies in the franchising process, vehicle modernization, operator consolidation and changes in the current business model, financing and a more structured route planning process, among others. This is an ambitious undertaking, not merely because of its scale, but the likely disruption to the current, relatively informal model by which jeepneys are regulated. This paper uses deductive thematic analysis, based upon a review of the literature on informal/formal hybridised urban transport regulatory models, to investigate the reform's likely impact on the dynamics of the sector. As such it tentatively confirms the likely issues arising when transitioning from an informal model to a more formalised one. The paper raises imperatives for the global informal transport sector as a whole.

Introduction

The nature of public passenger transport in many Philippine cities can be described as the informal complementing the formal. With minimal barriers to entry, public transport services act as a point of access for the urban labour force and provide mobility for much of the city's workforce (Mateo-Babiano, 2016).

Jeepneys constitute the most dominant public transport modes in the Philippines. These are 12 to 16-seater paratransit vehicles that were repurposed from American military jeeps left over from the Second World War. Due to their predominance they have acquired significant cultural, social and familial significance (Meñez, 1998). At present there are around 179,000 jeepneys across the country. Ninety percent of these are at least fifteen years old and produce significant environmental pollution (DOTr 2018; Fabian & Gota, 2009; Regidor, Vergel, & Napalang, 2009). A survey of jeepney passengers found that while they consider this form of transport to be familiar, easy and cheap, they are also regarded as noisy, dirty and dangerous (Okamura, Kaneko, Nakamura, & Wang, 2013) and that commuters habitually used this mode even for distances that could be completed by walking and cycling (Guillen, Ishida, & Okamoto, 2013).

Environmental, safety, and efficiency concerns around the sector have led to the establishment of the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program or PUVMP (DOTr, 2018), a transformative program that seeks to modify the entire sector and modernise the vehicle fleet. It seeks to revamp the practices, policies, business models, and cultural meanings of the existing public transport system in the Philippines (Sunio, Gaspay, Guillen, Mariano, & Mora, 2019). The program has ten components: regulatory reform; local public transport route planning for local government Units; route rationalisation; fleet modernization; industry consolidation; financing; vehicle useful life program; pilot implementation; stakeholder support mechanisms; and, communication. Its implementation involves more than twenty local and international partner agencies.

As with other cities, such as in Cape Town, many operators have opposed these initiatives (Schalekamp, 2017). Several transport groups have been staging strikes against the proposed new regulatory model (Rey, 2018), while some groups regard the initiatives as profit-oriented and ‘anti-poor’ (Talabong, 2017), something which may result in small individual owned businesses losing autonomy and leading to bankruptcy as in Mozambique's informal employment sector (Dibben, Wood, & Williams, 2015). Whilst there are several global studies that examine the potential disruption to the informal transport sector through formalisation (Behrens, McCormick, Orero, & Ommeh, 2017; Cervero & Golub, 2007; Mokonyama & Venter, 2013) none has yet taken place within the context of reform of the jeepney sector in the Philippines. It would not be unreasonable, however, to assume that there would be some commonality to the problems encountered for each.

This paper undertakes deductive thematic analysis to confirm that the problems cited in the literature from other cities are likely to recur in the consolidation and reform of the jeepney reform in the Philippines. It deduces several key themes stemming from the examination of transport literature surrounding informal/formal hybridised transport regulatory models. It then confirms the presence of these themes within the context of jeepney recapitalisation and sector reform in Metro Manila, by coding a consolidated set of interviewee transcribes from informed stakeholders. In eliciting these themes, the authors seek to develop a constructive research agenda for jeepney sector capitalisation and consolidation in the Philippines, which may be applied in other countries. This will inform the debate, explore implications for policy as well as social equity, and assist the sector in managing the hybridisation of informal and formal urban transport solutions. The paper will not seek to offer a normative stance regarding informal transport, as shown in work of Schwanen (2018), Mutongi (2006), Kumar, Singh, Ghate, Pal, and Wilson (2016) and Rizzo (2015). The emphasis will be upon how to deliver better on the ground services, i.e. its focus is applied.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 focuses on context and the study sites and industry situation. Section 3 theoretically grounds the paper in the literature of formal/informal hybrid urban transport solutions. Section 4 lays out the study's methodology - deductive thematic analysis with themes being deduced from the global literature. From this and the literature review, key themes are derived and defined. Section 5 shows the results and findings of the implementation of method – the presence of themes. The paper concludes in Section 6 by offering a research agenda which will generate applied solutions for the sector.

Section snippets

Metro Manila's jeepneys

Jeepneys are paratransit vehicles which typically seat 12 to 22 passengers (Vergel, 2014). Jeepneys constitute the bulk of urban transport in many Philippine cities. Metro Manila, the country's officially designated national capital region and is home to 12.8 million residents (PSA 2015), relies on jeepneys heavily for mobility. One out of five Metro Manila commuters depends on the jeepney for their daily mobility needs (Pante, 2016).

The jeepneys' ubiquitous presence within the Philippine

The formal/informal transport interface

As noted in Cervero (2000), paratransit and informality do not typically occur as a consequence of a conscious policy choice, but due to demand not being met by fully regulated or formalised supply, what Cervero and Golub (2007) refer to as ‘consummate gap filling’. Mateo-Babiano (2016) argues that informality is also necessitated by local conditions, practices and vernacular qualities to support local mobility requirements. Ferro, Muñoz, and Behrens (2015) stress that paratransit's flexibility

Method

There seems a strong degree of similarity between the problems cited in the field in section 2, and the academic literature on hybridity in section 3. The authors of the paper therefore sought to rigorously confirm whether or not the key themes emerging from the literature review were relevant to the jeepney sector reform in the Philippines. This paper is an offshoot of a qualitative research utilizing unstructured in-depth interviews with government officials (5 officials), two transport

Results

This section discusses the five topics defined in the deductive thematic codebook: government capacity, risk and risk insulation; reluctance to change; government need to insulate smaller operators; upskilling operator cooperatives. Participant quotes are offered where salient in italics.

Discussion and conclusions

Efforts to regulate informality in public transport service and provision continue to be a major challenge, particularly in developing city contexts such as the Philippines. Using a thematic framework drawn from the literature on informal/formal hybridised transport regulatory models, this paper has critically examined the recapitalisation and sector reform of the Philippine jeepney sector.

It seems clear that whilst jeepneys provide far reaching benefits to transport users - providing

Declaration of competing interest

None.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend their utmost gratitude to all individuals, groups and associations who contributed their time and resources to this study. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the Informal Urbanism Hub at the University of Melbourne. In addition, the authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Philippine's Department of Science and Technology PCIEERD. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not reflect any organisations. The

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