Would anyone dare bring back the calesa, please?

by Dong de los Reyes September 5, 2021 This is the row of tricycles outside the Sto. Tomas Central Elem. School SPED Center campus. (Photo f...

by Dong de los Reyes
September 5, 2021




This is the row of tricycles outside the Sto. Tomas Central Elem. School SPED Center campus. (Photo from DJ Baguio/wikimedia)



LUCENA CITY - Nobody but nobody brought into the fray over excessive tricycle fare rates the old-fashioned calesa of halcyon days. Calesa, guaranteed one horsepower, Clean Air Act-compliant unlike the much-ballyhooed TARANTODA now plying Lucena City routes, with some driver-operators charging P20 rather than the P8.50 fare pegged by a 2003 city ordinance.

Calesa that boasts of the least noise pollution than too-loud, smoke-belching tricycles; calesa totally independent of the dictates of fuel pump prices, fueled with grassoline and darak with exhaust in dung that can enrich farmlands and gardens rather than a cocktail of fumes that renders ambient air unfit, even deadly to breathe.



Lucena City residents are up in arms over excessive fare rates-- that ranges from P20 to P50, depending on how monstrous or greedy a tricycle driver's mood-- and are urging authorities to take action against these errant tricycle driver-operators victimizing poor passengers.

Passengers insist that tricycle driver-operators should abide by a 2003 ordinance that calls for an P8.50 fare/passenger (P7 for students, PWDs, and the elderly). And most of those driver-operators still stick to that law of local application while recalcitrants would rather exact what they think is due.



No local elder nor councilor has stepped into the fray, so far, convening contending parties to sit down and thresh out matters, and come to an equitable settlement.

TODAs-- that is tricycle owner-driver associations-- whether those who comply with the 2003 ordinance or the hard-headed blokes who vent their impatience on their hapless passengers are likely to say that that ordinance is out of synch with the times.



Apparently, not much have changed-- the US dollar was worth P44.46 in 2008, and is about P49 in 2021. Daily take home pay in 2008 ranged P320 to P190; these days, P530 to P316.

From 1990 up to 2021 gasoline price averaged at nearly a US dollar per liter, which means about P44 a liter in 2008 and P50/liter these days. Practically, gas consumers are paying for the same volume of gasoline at the same price in US dollars for over a decade. Hereabouts, we can only balk at how our Philippine peso has weakened over the years that leaves the notion that fuel consumers are coughing up more money.

So, any down-and-out tricycle driver-operator would likely bellyache, "prangkisa pa lang hindi biro mag-asikaso palakasan pa bago makakuha, lisensya P10k, gasolina buong maghapon kulang ang P200." Is that a mere four liters of gas daily as any sharp-eyed passenger would deduce from such a P200+ fuel expenditure?

Non-operator drivers have to shell out P150 daily boundary to the tricycle owner.

The complaints against arbitrary fare rates are mounting. So does the whimpers of TODAs over meager daily earnings that can hardly feed a household that they must resort to fare rates beyond the ambit of a local ordinance.

Nobody but nobody ever thought that it takes less than P200 worth of grassoline to feed a horse to pull a calesa.