Motorcycle taxis

Do we need more motorcycle taxis, not just in Metro Manila but in other parts of the country? If so, how should we best go about “regulating” them and their fares? To date, there are three service providers temporarily authorized by the government to provide motorcycle ride services. Should we add to this list as we “institutionalize” the service?

I ask these questions simply because motorcycle ride-hailing services (MC Taxis) like JoyRide, Angkas, and Move It hold what I believe to be “temporary” permits only, issued by the government under a supposed “pilot” study that started in 2019. MC Taxis also augmented public transportation in 2020-2022, which was limited at the time by the COVID pandemic.

The pandemic has ended, and all emergency measures resulting from it have been lifted. And MC Taxis have now become a permanent fixture on Metro Manila roads. The government’s “pilot” study on them has run for about four years now. (In the case of Angkas, I believe it has been around since 2016.) So, what’s next for MC Taxis?

Rene Santiago, an international consultant on transportation, a past President of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines, and a Fellow of the Foundation for Economic Freedom, sent me a note recently that MC Taxis, or “two-wheeled improvised public transport of local origin” have been around for about three decades — “hiding in plain sight, so to speak.”

Rene wrote, “Habal-habal [MC Taxis] only became a national concern when Angkas rode into the urban transport scene… It forced a national agency to launch a pilot project allowing an arguably illegitimate mode to operate — on a very limited scale. A welcome but perplexing move: launching a pilot study supervised by a technical committee devoid of a hypothesis, lacking in criteria on when (and how) to end a trial period.”

He added, “On the other hand, a science-based pilot study would have to re-examine the necessity (or superfluity) of government regulation over a transport mode that has thrived over the years without one. And realize that the experiment has been going on, successfully, for three decades.”

The present situation, he noted, posed the question: “to regulate or not to regulate.” And by regulation, he meant “the economic kind that entails franchising, fare control, and the like.” But outside of Metro Manila, he added, “there is overwhelming support” for MC Taxis, and “no strident call to franchise, control, much less ban, the service.”

While I see the merit in Rene’s arguments, I am not totally sold on the idea of a deregulated MC Taxi industry. It is public transportation, after all, and should have some form of guidance or regulation. As an option, Rene points to the tricycle “franchising” model, which is left primarily to local government units (LGUs) and outside the purview of a national franchising agency.

“If the government wants to strut its paternal impulses, it could take a cue from Maribojoc, a small municipality in Bohol that enacted in 2005 a velvet-glove ordinance for habal-habal. After all, it is a form of local public transport mode that is best left to LGUs who are already performing that role over tricycles-for-hire,” he wrote.

“Road safety is a valid concern, but economic regulation is the wrong tool. The correct one is technical regulation via the 3 Es (engineering, enforcement, education). Annual vehicle inspections should be strengthened — for all motor vehicles, not just motorcycles or habal-habal. Our roads are unsafe, to begin with,” he added.

But my concern with local regulation is that MC Taxis, at this point, operate beyond local boundaries. Unlike tricycles, which run only on specific routes within their respective LGUs, MC Taxis run across boundaries and without specific routes. Will localized regulation allow an MC Taxi registered in Makati City, for instance, to make trips outside the city, to and from?

However, Rene made a strong point in arguing that a single national agency like the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) may find it difficult to properly regulate MC Taxis, especially considering their numbers: his estimate is around 14 million motorcycles on the road, based on sales data, with roughly 1.4 million serving as MC Taxi full-time or part-time.

“An ideal regulatory framework should give rise to the following: Perform criminal and driving background checks of taxi drivers; Ensure drivers have valid licenses and competences; Lay out basic safety standards for vehicles; Require that drivers are adequately insured; Real-time monitoring quality by tracking drivers using GPS; Users are able to communicate complaints more easily and rapidly, and vice versa; Drivers and passengers can rate each other after every ride (two-way feedback mechanism); Optimize travel path, distance and time for taxi response and passenger journey via an algorithm,” Rene wrote.

“That is too high a bar for any government agency, maybe three out of eight. And yet, they are achievable — by the private sector. In fact, RHAs [ride-hailing apps] already provide most (if not all) of them — albeit limited so far to urban areas and to less than 1/50 of potential moto-taxis market. And RHAs can offer much more — if only government does not choke (and pre-select) their supply base. What else can government add into the table? Very little, actually,” he added.

He thus argued that the “best move” for the government is to “get out of the way, and let the market work its magic.” Anyway, for habal-habal, “it has been so in the last three decades, and users and providers are none the worse for the neglect.” Bottomline, Rene noted, “three decades and counting, the habal-habal will continue to ride (like the legendary Zorro) on Philippine roads — whether the government comes in, or not.”

Congress can play a supportive role by reviewing laws and removing “any ambiguity implied in the land transport and traffic code” with respect to MC Taxis, ride-hailing apps, and transport network vehicles like Grab Car, he said. I believe this to be necessary, as technology and current developments have obviously overtaken existing regulatory frameworks for land transport, which need to catch up.

And, perhaps the government should already end its “pilot” study and come out with its findings and recommendations with respect to the operation of MC Taxis nationwide. At this point, the MC Taxi cat is already out of the bag and we cannot put it back in. Time to move forward on this. We are way beyond the point of no return.

Marvin Tort is a former managing editor of ����ý, and a former chairman of the Philippine Press Council

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