When It Comes to Our 'Broken Public Transport System,' the Key Word Is Empathy

Oftentimes it takes a celebrity or prominent personality to bring attention to pressing social issues. When said celebrity has a massive social media following, the odds that whatever he or she is griping about gets picked up and becomes fodder for national conversation naturally becomes higher. 

It happened again last week when prominent media personality (and recent Esquire Philippines Man At His Best awardee) Atom Araullo tweeted about his experience getting a ride out of Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the country’s main air transport hub. At 7:20 p.m., there were apparently no coupon or metered taxis at the arrivals area of NAIA Terminal 2. And he couldn’t book a Grab ride either. He said he’d been trying for about an hour and counting.

“Basically kung wala kang sundo, you’re dead,” he said. “This is what a broken transpo system looks like.”

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What’s interesting about Araullo’s tweet is the reactions it got, which seemed to have been evenly split between those who weren’t surprised about it and were therefore sympathetic with the journalist’s predicament, and those who claim that they’ve never had any issues commuting out of NAIA and are therefore attacking Araullo for supposedly being whiny and a snowflake.

Just arrived at the airport from an overseas trip. No coupon taxis, no metered taxis, no Grab. Wala rin tayong mga bus at tren dito. Basically kung wala kang sundo, you’re dead. It’s been an hour and counting. This is what a broken transpo system looks like ????

— Atom Araullo (@atomaraullo) December 9, 2022

Anyone who has ever arrived at NAIA—in any of its four regular passenger terminals—knows leaving it is quite the challenge, and that’s putting it mildly. Air travel is stressful enough as it is but add in the extra layer of “escape from NAIA” and it’s no wonder ours is the third most stressful in Asia and Oceania (according to a study). 

So, at the risk of angering the passionate internet mob who believes traveling in and out of NAIA is a breeze, we’re going to side with Araullo on this one and submit that there is more than a modicum of truth in his statement. The public transport system in this country is broken and you need not look further than NAIA for proof.

If it only took you a few seconds or minutes to find a ride, then good for you; you managed to skip the hellish wait in stifling heat surrounded by dozens, or even hundreds, of other cranky and weary travelers. Congratulations, you get to go straight home, plop down on your bed, and parse through your camera roll and post your vacation photos on social media.

But your good fortune doesn’t invalidate the reality that other people don’t have it that easy. When you accuse Araullo of being a fault-finder because he had the audacity to publicly share his troublesome experience, which might be the complete opposite to yours, you’re being selfish and egotistical because you believe your own truth and dismiss anything that contradicts it. The key word is empathy, or the ability to understand what somebody else is feeling or going through.

It should really go without saying but here it is anyway: it’s not the same experience for everyone else. Just because it’s sunny on your neck of the woods doesn’t mean you get to reject other people’s cries for help when their home is being battered by a storm. You don’t get to disparage somebody’s fight for justice when you’ve benefited from a legal system designed to favor a select few. And when an exhausted traveler says they’ve been waiting over an hour for a ride out of the airport after just coming off of a stressful overseas trip, maybe give him the benefit of the doubt instead of bragging about how it only took you minutes to get a ride yourself.

I’ve traveled quite extensively over the last few months, both domestic and overseas, but I’m one of the lucky ones because I get to drive a car and can actually park at the airport or very close to it. I still have to book a Grab ride to get to where my car is, though and, yes, that can sometimes take at least an hour, especially if you have the misfortune of getting stuck there during peak hours.

The tradeoff here is the sky-high parking fees if you choose to leave your car there overnight or for a few days. I choose to pay it anyway if only to save myself the hassle and aggravation of worrying whether some Grab or taxi driver would take pity on me and actually accept my fare.

That’s my experience, but that doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to the hardships other people have to go through just so they could complete that last mile ordeal to get to their home or hotel. If anything that just makes me more aware of what our main airport sorely needs: a reliable, efficient, not to mention affordable, mass transport system. (Although, to be fair, traveling out of NAIA has greatly improved from the days when your only option was taxis that charged you insanely high fares). 

Lord knows Manila isn’t the only city in the world with public transport issues, but when you get exposed to places that seem to have figured it out—places like Singapore, Frankfurt, Kuala Lumpur, or Seoul, you can’t help but wish that we’d have figured this one out, too. The only time we can truly say that our public transport system isn’t broken is when a passenger doesn’t have to wait an hour or more for a ride to get home; when we’re not at the mercy of ride-hailing or taxi apps to get us home safely and without getting scammed; and when tweets like Araullo’s become a thing of the past.