In danger are the safety and mobility of 88 percent of households who are not rich enough to own cars. In danger are 20 million students who need to walk, bike, or take public transport to go to school. In danger are half a million health workers, social workers, and barangay workers  who are forced to walk kilometers because of inadequate public transport. In danger are at least 1.5 million persons with disability, at least 1 million pregnant mothers and their newborns, and 7.5 million senior citizens who need to take trips to offices, stores, or hospitals. 

In danger is the economy: if we do nothing, in Metro Manila alone we will lose P520 billion every year - from longer and harder commutes, job losses, the shut down of public transport operators, road accidents, and carbon emissions. This is enough to push us deeper into recession that will take us years to undo.  

In danger are the jobs of at least 2.7 million land transport workers. More than half of whom are our drivers, conductors, and freight handlers. Already on their routes as early as dawn and as late as midnight, they are among our most hardworking laborers.

As health safety measures and physical distancing reduce PUVs’ seating capacity by half, many of them will suffer losses even after hours of hard labor. Even worse, more than half of them may lose jobs as public transport operators shut down due to unprofitable operations. To protect these workers, we should overhaul the way we operate our public transport system.

Even before this pandemic, we commuters have already had to suffer from an inhumane public transportation system. Some of us wake up at 3 am just to get to work at 8 am. After work, some of us endure another 3 to 5 hours of travel, arriving home as late as 11 pm. Many of us do not have a choice: our overburdened public transportation system is all we can afford. Decades of car-centered policies have oppressed us. And this will only get worse if we do nothing. 

If we let this bomb explode, we risk massive loss of human life from a second, more severe wave of COVID-19 transmission caused by crowding in our transport system. We risk our people’s lives and livelihood. We risk destroying our economy.

We can defuse this bomb. But we should move as one, NOW.