Shut Up Already About UBER and LTFRB, GIVE US A MASS PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM NOW!

I think people are drawing focus on the wrong thing as they howl expletives over the LTFRB's suspension of transport network company Uber.

I can understand their frustration and anger over having to navigate the daily traffic-geddon; having to deal with unscrupulous even criminal taxi cab drivers; or having to risk being groped or robbed or both in other public conveyances.

In the hot mess of a daily traffic hell, Uber looks like the hero. But it is in reality still part of the larger problem which is that the Philippines does not have a mass public transport system.

Most Filipinos still believe that the thousands of individually operated public buses, jeeps, AUVs, tricycles, and what have you make up a public transport system.

The simplest definition of a system is that it is a set of connected things or parts performing together as a complex whole.

The buses, jeeps, and what-have-you DO NOT PERFORM TOGETHER AS A COMPLEX WHOLE, but on the contrary, compete with each other for to accomplish the same job.

In this sense, it is clear that Uber just an addition to the number of competing MODES of public transport.

But I am not against Uber or Grab or any TNC. 

I believe, that it can have a place in a mass public transport system -- except that this country doesn't have one.

To figure what a public mass transport system would be like, imagine having two or three transport companies servicing EDSA. EDSA itself could be devoted to bus lines and these bus lines could be fed by AUV or jeep lines which in turn could be fed by tricycle lines.

Of course, this isn't a bulletproof idea but it should be enough to start people thinking along a better direction than arguing over whether Uber and what not should be allowed to operate.

This post is based on a status update I published on Facebook: