Yokohama, Japan | December 13, 2000

Good afternoon to everyone.

It is not true that I am a "Mrs." because I am not married. I was looking at the title of all the distingushed male speakers in the programme and I noticed that there are "Doctors" and "Professors" and "Misters" but I couldn't quite identify by their titles who's available or not, so please allow me to make an important recommendation for the benefit of the women attending this workshop: I suggest that we put "MD" at the end of all the names of the unavailable male participants, short for "Married. Don't even think about it."

(he-he-ho-ho-grin-grin)

I believe that we are in agreement in most of all the basic and essential things: We have realized that the increase in private car use has had devastating social and ecological impacts on people's lives and the world we inhabit; and that there is a need to shift to socially-equitable and sustainable modes of transportation.

I am grateful, even elated, to have heard an acknowledgement of the lack of facilities for the poor as they walk and cycle on the streets. I thank Bambang for showing a picture in his presentation of a woman covering her face as a motor vehicle emits black smoke on her. As a cyclist, I could very well relate to her everyday experience. I also thank Prof. Pendakur for the slides he brought showing us the kind of service the poor get from public transport as they ride not only inside buses but on top of them. I believe they drove the point home more than any talk, analysis and figure we can offer. We just need to look at how the poor get by and not let ourselves be desensitized by the familiarity of the sight.

"Cities have become too large." Mr. Gwilliam raised the question: "But how do we measure? When do we say that a city is too large?" I say we look at the distance and amount of time people travel daily for their jobs. Clearly, 3 hours is too much. 5 hours is too much. A friend of mine leaves for work even before the sun rises and when he gets home at night, his children are already sleeping. He compensates for lack of time to sleep at home by sleeping on the bus.

This is how the poor get by.

Once I saw a man balancing 2 car tires on each end of the handlebar of his bicycle. By the looks of him and his bicycle, those car tires are not for his car because he doesn't own one. Several times, I've seen gas tanks transported on a bicycle. No sidecar attached to the bicycle was necessary. You most probably have seen a family of four travelling on one single bicycle.

The poor get by and make do with whatever they have.

Just a few months ago, I was invited to give an art workshop to underprivileged high school students who are scholars in a vocational school. In order to get to the school, I must have taken the most varied forms of transport all in one day in my entire life. I rode a tricycle to where I met the person who invited me. We walked, then rode an FX (mega taxi), then rode a jeepney, until we came to the most interesting part: We travelled on the rail, not on a train, but on an improvised sort of cart which has tiny steel wheels that can be attached to the railroad tracks and pushed by a man. It can accomodate up to 8 people and is made out of bamboo. It even had a big umbrella to shield its passengers from the heat of the sun.

At one point, we stopped and the man pushing us asked us to get off the thing and stand clear off the tracks. There was a train fast approaching and I didn't even hear it honk its horn. When it went past, the man carried the thing back on the rail again and we continued on our journey. There were other carts of the same kind ahead of us, behind us; some going in the opposite direction. I am particularly scared of bridges when there are gaps on it and I can see what's deep down below. We travelled on this thing passing such kind of a bridge and I could see the black and dirty Pasig River deep below us. I was earnestly praying that the train would not come while we were on the bridge because I was afraid that I might miss my step in panic and fall through the gap. There was too little space between the train and where you can stand on to avoid getting run down. I wouldn't want the train to pass with my leg caught in one of the gaps.

Was there an alternative way to get to our destination? Yes, but it would have taken much longer because of road traffic.

We say, "Give people more choices." The travel choices we make are only determined by the transport mode available to us and our financial capability to acquire the most convenient mode. We have made the car the most convenient transport mode when we subsidized them by building more roads. But travelling by car is not even an option for the poor. All they can do is dream about owning one. "If only I could own a car, life would be so much better. If it has air conditioning, I wouldn't have to breathe air pollution everyday."

16 people die daily as a consequence of air pollution in Metro Manila according to a report made by the Asian Development Bank last year (1999). Yes, there are options available and fares are even low but service is so bad that if one had better purchasing power, he would choose to travel by car, even if the car is old, run-down and polluting.

All of us here very well agree that there is a need to provide good public transport. That is, if we truly want to prioritize the needs of the poor and if we truly want social equitability. There is one important recommendation made in this meeting which I took note of and which I would like to reiterate as representative of civil society. That is, to require from borrowing governments an over-all, sustainable urban transportation and land use plan and how it would directly benefit the poor, not merely how it would generate economic development in general.

Another recommendation is "that the Bank require that before major new urban road infrastructure loans are made, a) sufficient data on ambient air pollution be available; that b) state of the art modelling can demonstrate that the new road loan will not drive an area into violation or further violation of the air quality standards; that c) the new road is embedded in a transportation master plan which has either been subjected to a strategic environmental impact assessment and/or has been found to be in conformity with ambient air quality standards."

As a Metro Manila resident fighting for clean air, and I would even include members of other bicycle advocacy organizations, we would be overjoyed, even ecstatic, to see the abovementioned recommendations in the final copy of this Strategy.

And if I may add to the list of recommendations I'd like to reiterate from those already made by distinguished participants in this meeting which is a basic component in the Sustainable Transportation Network's view of transportation planning: "Transport planning is always the better when we involve communities who are being planned for."

We have raised our concerns about the continuity of projects amidst a system of continually changing political leadership. I, personally, am concerned about this issue because of a project I am presently involved in - the Marikina Bikeways Network. To institutionalize the project, we are trying to get an administrative order and city council ordinance out creating the Bicycle Office as part of the normal function of the city. I have seeked Prof. Cal's opinion and expert advice on the matter and he said that an administrative order or even a city council ordinance would not suffice because it can be overturned by the next administration. Besides, ordinances are not all implemented. He said we should get civil society organized to pressure government.

And that is one task which needs to be done: organizing and building the capacity of Marikina residents to understand fundamental transport issues and help build their ability to assert their right to speak and lobby for these issues. But it would be extremely difficult without financial support. The practice of transparency and open information in the implementation of the Marikina Bikeways Project, hopefully, will also help prevent corrupt practices that ultimately hurt the whole society, but most especially the poor.

There is undeniable strength in organizing citizens around important issues. We, as citizens, should know if we are being given correct information. We should learn to assess the impacts of transport projects ourselves rather than merely accept the projected impacts given to us by business interest groups or even the government.

"Our dream is a world free of poverty." I truly hope we mean what we say.

We seem to be in a difficulty in coming up with solutions in funding for public transport. A question had been asked, "Who will pay for it?" If we continue to neglect transport services for the poor, they will pay for it; as they have been paying all this time when we were building roads for rich car owners.

This was a presentation/reaction representing civil society's perspective in the Asian workshop. It has been edited to fit Fireflynews.