THE government is adamantly pushing for the jeepney modernization program —with little success — as many stakeholders in the transport sector and even senators are opposing its complete rollout.

Come to think of it, the words “jeepney” and “modernization” are two opposing concepts.

However hard Filipinos love the jeepney, it is still the relic of the last world war, salvaged and refurbished from the US Army’s vehicle fleet that they left in Manila 75 years ago.

We have to recognize that the jeepney system with its concepts of “boundary” wages, short and parochial routes, unreliable and unsafe service and its contribution to environmental pollution, cannot be modernized.  The vehicles may be replaced by bigger and air-conditioned units but they follow the same messy route system and thus cannot really be called “modern.”

‘It is understandable that we cannot as yet have a public transport system that can approximate those in California and Beijing, but at least we should try to modernize our transport sector…’

What is modern are the robotaxis in a number of cities in the US.  China’s fleet of computer-driven electric cars without drivers — that’s modern.  San Francisco in California is experimenting with driverless buses, less than a week after California regulators gave the green light to the expansion of robotaxis.  These buses do not have a driver’s seat or a steering wheel and will run daily as a free shuttle service in a fixed route called the Loop around Treasure Island.

It is understandable that we cannot as yet have a public transport system that can approximate those in California and Beijing, but at least we should try to modernize our transport sector, both its physical fleet of motor vehicles and the system of time-bound route management.

In the Philippines, we have similar places that are conducive to really modern transport experiments such as the one in California.  We might mention here the Makati business district, Subic, Clark and the Mall of Asia area.

We are happy that the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) announced last week that it has partnered with the Japan-based mobility firm Zenmov, Inc. and the MC Metro Transport Operation, Inc. to launch the Philippines’ first smart autonomous bus service.

Both Clark and Subic are vast areas of business that lack transport facilities for its ordinary workers and commuters, not to mention visitors.

This modern transport technology from Japan will initially be used at the New Clark City, Clark Freeport Zone, and Clark International Airport.

The self-driving bus that was deployed in the area uses a transportation cloud system called the “Smart Mobility Operation Cloud,” a system which allows them to maximize vehicle availability based on collected travel demand data.

The fleet of self-driving buses will initially start with 17 vehicles.  It will also be a free service for Clark commuters until July 2025.

We need more of these modern ideas in the transport sector.