Boquet 511 BUS TRANSPORTATION IN THE PHILIPPINES Y. BOQUET Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France & University of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines Email: Yves.Boquet@u-bourgogne.fr ABSTRACT In the absence of any decent rail transportation network, travel in the Philippines relies heavily on the use of buses, city buses as well as intercity buses. This paper, based on personal field observations (in MetroManila as well as on bus routes from Manila to Santa Cruz, Daet, and Angeles City), a local survey of travel practices, and a review of writings about bus services, will first investigate some of the idiosyncrasies of bus travel within the Philippines (organization and governance of bus travel, practice of bus travel by users). It will then focus on the problems caused in MetroManila by excessive bus traffic before examining policies underway to make traffic more fluid in the National Capital Region of the Philippines, especiallly the effort to develop integrated bus terminals and to reduce bus flows on EDSA, the major thoroughfare in MetroManila. Keywords: bus travel; bus terminals; Philippines; MetroManila 1. INTRODUCTION In many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, especially where the development of railroads has been minimal, buses are a way of life. Most people do not own a private motor vehicle, and it is the only way to get around a large city, and even more to travel from one city to other. In Brasilia, a huge bus station serves the needs of poor people going to/from Southeast or Northeast Brazil from/to the pioneer fronts areas of Amazonia and Mato Grosso. However, bus transport is quite often marked by many insufficiencies (Iles 2005). In cities choked by heavy vehicular traffic of motorcycles (Vietnam) and automobiles (China), transportation planning choices vary from the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit schemes (Rede Integrada in Curitiba, Brazil, Transmilenio in Bogota, Colombia, Transjakarta in Indonesia, BRT in Guangzhou, China) to the building of massive subway systems (Beijing, Shanghai). The low level of development of bus services in some countries such as Cambodia has led to analyses about the adaptation of bus service to the travel behavior of urban dwellers (Choocharukul & Ung 2011) while several authors have focused on bus drivers’ behaviors (Park et al. 2011, Htun et al. 2012). In this paper we will focus on the Philippines, where buses are widely used, drivers’ behavior questionable, and buses held responsible for much of urban congestion and pollution. This paper is based on field work in MetroManila, and on observations made on repeated bus trips of the author from Manila to provinces (Santa Cruz, Laguna via Calamba and Los Baños, Laguna; Daet, Camarines Norte, through Lucena, Quezon ; Angeles City, Pampanga). The paper will first present some general characteristics of bus travel inside the Philippines, with observations of travel behaviors of passengers and vendors, then will narrow its focus to MetroManila, insisting on the role of the buses in Manila’s traffic congestion, and finally on policies underway to solve congestion by reducing the number of buses in the streets of MetroManila.