Santolan to Recto in a jeepney

By Cenon Bibe Philippine Daily Inquirer IT WAS not what I had expected. The trip from our place in Cainta to the station of the Light Rail Transit in Santolan, Pasig City, usually took 15 to 20 minutes. In the morning of August 5, the day for the Santolan to C.M. Recto leg of the Rush Hour Commute project of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and INQUIRER.net, it took 40 minutes. Sitting in heavy traffic throughout the usually short trip, I was dead sure that I would be in for a long journey to Manila that morning. My watch read “8:12” a.m. as I met my partner Alex Villafania of INQUIRER.net at the waiting shed across the train station on Marcos Highway. We were supposed to have met before 8 a.m. to undertake our part of the project to gauge the various ways of getting from one point of Metro Manila to another. “If my trip is any indication, we can be sure that traffic will be killing us all the way to (Claro M.) Recto,” I told Alex, trying to prep him for our journey—a series of jeepney rides that would take us from Pasig to Cubao in Quezon City to San Juan and then to Manila. After a brief discussion of how we would go about our trip, we jumped onto a Cogeo-Cubao jeepney. “This would take us straight to Edsa,” I said. It would be in Cubao where we would take another jeepney to Recto. Traffic was light to moderate on the Cubao-bound lane of Marcos Highway, but the jeepney driver took his time trying to pick up every possible passenger he could find along the way. It was 8:18 a.m. and we had just crossed the Marcos Highway Bridge over the Marikina River when our journey came to a crawl. We later discovered that traffic was backed up from Aurora Boulevard, fronting the Philippine School of Business Administration (PSBA), to Barangka in Marikina City, because of a buildup of vehicles trying to navigate the U-Turn slot fronting the school. The less than one-kilometer stretch of road that intersected with Katipunan Avenue took eight minutes to conquer. “Simula pa lang yan,” I thought out loud. I was so sure the road to Cubao would be the real test of our resolve—or so I thought. The time was 8:26 a.m. when we passed by PSBA. Eight minutes later, we were already on the outskirts of the Cubao commercial center, or more precisely the Araneta Center. What?! Two to three kilometers in eight minutes? It must be a fluke. It should have taken at least 30 minutes. To my mind, it was impossible. Traffic was light to moderate. It was either something was wrong that day or it had been a very long time since I went to Cubao riding a jeepney that the traffic gridlock that I knew while I was growing up in Quezon City had become a thing of the past. Anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise. What was not surprising was when the jeepney that Alex and I had taken suddenly took a right turn at Stanford street. It was no longer going to Edsa. “Hanggang dito na lang po tayo,” the young yet be-mustachioed aide of the driver told us. Trip cutting...Well, some things don’t change. We didn’t get the full distance for the P10 a piece fare that we paid for the ride. Choosing not to protest, Alex and I jumped out and started an eight-minute walk to Westpoint street, right under the Araneta Center-Cubao station of the LRT Purple Line. After a minute wait, a jeepney came up from Westpoint and we jumped on as it turned right on Aurora Boulevard going toward Manila. “Brod, magkano hanggang Recto?” I asked the driver, who later gave his name as Roseldo Pacia, a 41-year-old driver from Batangas. Peering back to us through his rear-view mirror, Pacia responded, “Sebentin pipti.” Then, sounding more cautious than curious, he abruptly added, “Para saan ba yan?” as he looked back at Alex who was taking a video of passengers getting on. We explained about the project and that put him at ease. As we started this step of our journey, I was still waiting for the horrendous traffic that would make our morning miserable … but it did not happen. At least, it not happen where I had expected it to happen. Apart from the five-minute stops to wait for and pick up passengers at Seattle street, V. Mapa and Stop and Shop, the jeepney ride was smooth and continuous up to Pureza in Manila. Pacia later told us that traffic had become lighter partly because of the jump in fuel prices and largely because of the operation of the LRT. More people have been taking the train, said Pacia, who has been plying that Cubao-Divisoria route for the last 18 years. But the silver lining for commuters and motorists has been a dark line for drivers. The driver said that it had one mishap after another for them. The full operation of the LRT in 2004 saw their daily earnings fall from P1,500 to P700. When the price of diesel started it upward spiral, the P700 take home of drivers has gone down to P300, Pacia said. Passengers have been so scarce that when a saleslady paid 50 centavos short of the P8.50 minimum fare, Pacia said he was even thankful that she took his jeepney. As if to grant my “wish” of traffic turning heavy, vehicle flow came to a crawl from Pureza to the Nagtahan bridge and then from the Legarda station of the LRT to Mendiola. The “crawl” from Pureza to Mendiola took 15 minutes. From thereon, traffic was again light to moderate. By 9:38 a.m.—or 1 hour and 26 minutes later—Alex and I got to the CM Recto station of the LRT’s Purple Line. Not bad, I thought. The misery I had anticipated did not happen. Gladly, things did not turn out as I had expected. But even though I believed we made good time, we were still last among all the volunteers to the Rush Hour project to arrive at our destination. Well, the time and the P27.50 I spent for the trip were worth the adventure.