The freedom to not own a car

Traffic congestion along Edsa —INQUIRER PHOTO/RICHARD A. REYES

Because of the grossly inadequate mass transportation system in Metro Manila and other urban centers, people are encouraged to buy a car.

The sales pitch goes: why spend P200 a day commuting via sometimes unavailable, always crowded public transit, when you can use it to buy a new car?

By setting aside P200 daily, you can afford to pay the monthly mortgage of an auto loan and drive to work or school or do errands in air-conditioned comfort according to a schedule most convenient for you.

Of course, no mention is made of the cost of maintaining and operating a car, which includes not only fuel and the required regular preventive maintenance service, but also the registration and annual insurance renewal payments, parking and tollway fees, and repairs if the need to restore the car to roadworthy condition arises after a traffic accident.

In short, owning a car involves not only the acquisition cost, but the operating and maintenance costs.

Remember, a car is the second most expensive thing you buy after your home.

But come to think of it, is the cost of owning a car worth it? Is it a necessary expense?

The only benefit of owning a car is bragging rights. Your car is your status symbol, and the higher the retail price of the car you own, the more envy and respect you expect to get from everyone.

However, 90 percent of the time, it is parked in your garage or the parking basement of your office or a car park building where you have to line up and wait for a vacant slot and then pay a horrendous parking fee.

Owning a car does not save you from the stressful chore of having to fight your way through the city’s chaotic traffic mess day after day, and in the process, adding to the air pollution, enlarging the country’s carbon footprint, and thus contributing to global warming and climate change.

The good news is that innovative developments are leading the way to a future where owning a car may no longer be necessary.

New alternatives

In the United States, according to a recent article in The New York Times, many younger Americans do not consider owning a car a goal or a necessity because novel technologies, including ride-hailing services like Uber and advances in self-driving cars, are creating new alternatives for commuting, shuttling children, and going to the store, particularly in urban settings.

Over here, while self-driving cars are still a distant dream, we already have Uber and Grab, readily accessible via an app on your smartphone, and point-to-point (P2P) buses that provide more comfortable transportation for Metro Manila commuters other than the 5,953 minivans of the UV Express Service.

In fact, so many shuttle service and carpooling companies are popping up in urban centers that the Land Transportation Franchise and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) has a Transport Network department that approves app-based services.

Taking the shuttle service instead of driving your car to your destination is much more economical, less stressful, and helps to lessen the number of motor vehicles on the road.

Here is an example: When I have an appointment in Makati, I park my car in a free parking lot at the Alabang Town Center, board a P2P bus that leaves for Greenbelt 1 every 30 minutes, and upon arriving there, call a Grab or Uber car or take one of the lined-up taxi cabs to get to my final destination.

To go home, I board a P2P bus at Greenbelt 1 that leaves for Alabang every 30 minutes, and upon arriving at the bus terminal, walk to the parking lot to pick up my car.

The roundtrip costs P160 or P80 cash one way, which for a senior citizen adds up to a discounted fare of P64 one way or P128 roundtrip.

The dispatcher at the P2P bus terminal offers a free beep card; you only have to pay for the P80 load on it. When you use the beep card, the fare goes down to P50 one way or P100 round trip.

You can reload your beep card quickly and easily at any P2P bus terminal.

Senior citizen beep cards are available at the MRT and LRT, and at a lower one-way fare of P40, or P80 roundtrip.

Compare those figures to the expense of driving to Makati (P164 for the Skyway toll one way, or P328 round trip), paying for on-street pay parking or in one of the car park buildings (P45 for the first three hours, P20 for every hour thereafter or a fraction thereof), and the fuel (for a 1.6-liter compact car, an average of 8 liters of gasoline roundtrip, more if you drive a bigger car)—not to mention the stress of driving on the Skyway, negotiating Makati City traffic, and looking for parking space. There’s also the cost of wear and tear on your car.

Comparing P160 to P725 per trip is a no-brainer in deciding which mode of mobility is smarter.

Another advantage

Aside from the cash saved, taking the P2P bus offers another advantage: superior, quiet comfort and convenience. You can relax and let a professional bus driver do the driving.

The buses (a few are Volvos) are new, sleek and fast on the Skyway. The seats are individual, cushy, supportive, and reclining with high backrests.

The air-conditioning is freezing cold, and Wi-Fi is free.

No crowding or squeezing of passengers and no stopping to unload passengers at several places along the way like the UV Express minivans which, however have many more routes than theP2P buses and reach their destinations faster because of their smaller size.

At present, the P2P buses have six routes including Trinoma, Centris, Ortigas, Glorietta 5, SM North Edsa and Fairview.

P2P buses are 24 hours in the SM North-Makati and Trinoma-Makati routes.

Summing up, along with the ambitious plans of Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade to rehab mass transit services like the MRT and PNR, and build new infrastructure, the proliferation of ride-hailing services, app-based carpooling, and shuttle services and P2P buses should eventually give us the freedom to not own a car.