THE new secretary of the Department of Transportation, Vince Dizon, started his week taking public transportation. He says he wants to see and feel exactly what commuters go through every day as they go to their schools or workplaces.
“I would not say it was horrible,” he replied to a question during Tuesday’s press conference. But he gathered plenty of input on how he could go about improving the commuting experience for many Filipinos in his next few months in office.
Specifically, he took note of busway improvements for major thoroughfare EDSA.
To be sure, such a gesture is nothing new. Several public officials have pulled a similar stunt highlighting that they are one with the people – one of us, in fact – and that they do not make decisions from the comfort of their chaffeured vehicles or airconditioned rooms.
From the looks of it, Dizon knows whereof he speaks, such that his commute is more information gathering rather than public relations. The former president of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and former presidential adviser for flagship programs and projects should be knowledgeable about public partnerships and translating big-ticket concepts to implementable reality.
In pursuit of his mandate, he also asked central office executives to tender their courtesy resignations.
Transportation is a sore spot in the Filipino’s daily struggles. As if earning one’s keep from day to day were not already difficult in itself, many suffer the daily difficulties of commuting, with a system designed and implemented by those who do not actually know about these struggles.
And since the commuter experience has always been challenging, many have resigned themselves to that this is something that must be endured and accepted as a given.
It is good to see Secretary Dizon’s initial zeal in wanting to make the commuting experience more bearable for Filipinos, after the string of transport officials who have done so little about it, if not made it worse. Other modes of transport have their own distinct challenges, as do the countless other issues of getting people and goods from Point A to Point B. Three years seems like a short time for all the things that need to get done, especially given numerous right of way problems that Dizon’s predecessors have had to contend with.
Nobody wants transportation to just be “not horrible” for one day. The ultimate objective is to make it better for Filipinos even at rush hour, on weekends, on paydays, and even during inclement weather. The taxpaying, long-suffering Filipino commuting public deserves no less.