The CSB Experience 3: Pedicab Roadkill

    One thing I dread every time I leave the Vito Cruz LRT station is seeing the sight of woman-crazy-business-minded-perverted pedicab drivers who would wait along the first few steps of the station’s staircase just so they could lure commuters. I even despise the mere fact they’re plying the Taft-P. Ocamo area.  Just so you guys know: Pedicab drivers are a menace to society!

    Not that I oppose the existence of pedicabs and other forms of mass transport like tricycles and jeepneys, it’s just that the people who conduct  this mode of transport lacks discipline, moral responsibility, professional ethics and are heavily ignorant of traffic laws.

    I mean come on, Pablo Ocampo Street is a one-way lane yet these pedicabs use it as a 4-way road which they could use and abuse whenever they want. During rush hour, P. Ocampo along St. Scholastica is usually heavily jammed with traffic (Put Taft Avenue in the same position and it’s far worse!).

     But what makes it all the worse is that pedicabs are clogging and hogging every available space in the street, making hazardous “pasikut-sikot” around cars, buses and trucks especially if it means trying to go against the normal one-way flow of traffic in the area. And just so they could have it their way, they would even resort  to scaring unsuspecting walkers who commute these areas by threatening that they would run of them.  The pedicabs-in-yellow are living, breathing DEATHTRAPS!
Evil, huh?

    What’s more evil is the way they rate their fare matrices, if they have any. A short drive from CSB to somewhere just a block away would already cost a passenger 20 smackers. During  rainy days when Taft is under water, they would charge double or even triple of that amount. Compare that to how normal pedicabs would rate their fares in the Manila suburbs, a little over 5 to 10 pesos. It’s a total rip-off!

    Any student who goes to any of the major Taft schools (CSB, DLSU, St. Scho and Arellano) is a Taft pedicab driver’s rich source of income. Their illegally-established terminals are strategically situated near school gates, mall and mini-marts, condos, popular restos and LRT station entrances.  Knowing that the average Taft student has a wealthy amount of lunch money, it’s no wonder they charge their rates that high yet their services is not worth 20-pesos but it is worth your funeral.

    If they see someone dressed in a chef’s uniform, pedicab drivers would yell “AKIC! AKIC! AKIC!” (pertaining to CSB’s Angelo King International Center in Estrada cor. Arellano Street). If they see someone carrying a T-Square they’d yell “SDA! SDA! SDA!” (pertaining to CSB’s School of Design and Arts in P. Ocampo). If someone is dressed like she’s ready to shop, they’d yell “HARRISON! HARRISON! HARRISON!” (Harrison Plaza).

    They seem so desperate to get a passenger, up to the point of  actually going towards a potential passenger instead of the passenger going towards him to give her a ride. There’s this one time when I saw a driver taking away some stuff from an old woman who was merely going down the stairs from the LRT in hopes that she’ll ride on his three-wheelers even if that poor woman may or may not even be interested on doing so. Talk about perverted maniac!

    Some old-time Manilans recalled that there was such a time when pedicab drivers were totally non-existent in the Taft area, or at least are relegated to the residential zones, blocks away from Taft itself.  The dawn of the Taft-based “yellow menace” seems to have occurred only recently.

    The higher-ups of CSB are already doing measures to discourage its students of ever riding into  one of these hazards-on-wheels (this could  actually help reduce a pedicab driver’s earnings as much) by giving them alternatives by either offering shuttle services between the three buildings (which I doubt a lot of Benildeans actually make use of besides field trips, et al) or by telling them to just walk. AKIC is only two blocks away from the main campus and is of walking distance. Same goes for SDA which is only half as far.

    I think there we should put pressure into the city government or even to Alfredo Lim to help elmimate or at least minimize the presence of pedicabs in areas where they are not needed. He should not make reason that hundreds of people depend on this livelihood and that there are no alternatives. I think this form of livelihood employs more than enough Manileños and I believe there are alternatives to it if Lim has the political will to provide such. He should look into the countless violations these drivers committed, the traffic laws that they continue to ignore and the threats they pose to students, workers and other commuters.  Not only should the Lim government revoke their franchise to ply their cabs in Taft or anywhere else in Manila, they must be given alternative and more sustainable opportunities that could make no more of them a menace within the city’s jurisdiction.

For the sake of no more “pedicab roadkill”.