Stranded or Squeezed?

Anyone who has stood at a transport terminal in Pavia, Santa Barbara, or the outskirts of Iloilo City at 8:00 PM knows the feeling. It’s a mix of anxiety and exhaustion. When a jeepney finally pulls up—already packed to the brim—you don’t calculate safety risks. You calculate whether your toes can grip the stirrup well enough to get you home.

This “kabit” or “haybol” culture is clearly a failure of service.

The Iloilo capitol touched on the real issue when Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. admitted that overloading has resurfaced due to “uneven demand and limited transport availability.” He rightly noted that managing the problem is difficult “especially when there are no other available vehicles.”

That admission is critical. It signals that the Provincial Government understands that simply cracking down on drivers won’t solve the problem. In fact, without a parallel increase in fleet volume, strict enforcement might make things worse.

Consider the “Public Safety Paradox.” If the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and local police rigidly enforce capacity limits during late-night hours without providing alternative rides, they aren’t saving lives; they are trading one danger for another. Kicking five “excess” passengers off a jeepney leaves them stranded on dark roadsides, vulnerable to crime and accidents, waiting for a ride that might never come.

We cannot punish commuters for being desperate.

This is why the Capitol’s decision to involve the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO) is the most promising part of this story. We need to move away from reactive policing and toward what Defensor calls “data-driven solutions.”

For decades, we’ve treated transport management as a muscle game – more checkpoints, more tickets. It hasn’t worked. Instead, we need “math, not muscle.” The PPDO needs to generate heat maps of commuter density. We need to know exactly which routes are choking between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM and adjust the “last-trip” cutoffs based on actual volume, not arbitrary schedules set years ago.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan is on the right track with their recent resolution urging local chief executives to increase trips during peak and nighttime hours. This is the supply-side fix we need. Drivers often cut trips early because running a late-night loop with few passengers on the return leg eats into their earnings. With fuel prices fluctuating and minimum fares hovering around PHP 13.00 to PHP 15.00, a half-empty return trip is a financial loss they can’t afford.

If the province wants to stop overloading, it shouldn’t just look at the passenger count; it should look at the economics. Local Government Units (LGUs) might need to explore incentives or subsidies for cooperatives to run “sweeper” trips late at night, ensuring that sticking to capacity limits doesn’t mean leaving workers behind.

The review of protocols is appropriate. But let’s ensure the review leads to better schedules, not just heftier fines.

If we want this problem to stop “resurfacing,” we should stop treating overloading like a moral failure and start treating it like a measurable shortage, then enforce the rules after it has done the hard work of making a safe ride actually available.

The goal should be to get every Ilonggo home safely – inside the vehicle, not hanging off the back.