You’ll know you’re on the Philippine soil when you see them on the streets–the colorful and noisy jeepneys. Jeepneys are the most popular mode of transportation in the country. They are testament to the ingenuity of the Filipinos. They are actually converted WWI jeeps left by the Americans. Philippine jeepnes have solved 2 transportation in the Philippine—how to provide cheap public transportation to ordinary Filipinos and how to make cheap fare profitable enough for the drivers.

Jeepneys have been plying the streets of Manila for decades now. It can take you anywhere you want to go in Manila. They pick up passengers wherever they see them and they unload passenger wherever the passenger want to alight the jeep. They and the public buses are blamed for the very bad traffic condition in the Philippines. They just load and unload passengers wherever they want.

Jeepneys are also blamed as one of the major pollutants in the Philippines. You can see them emitting really large and black gas into the air. All you have to do is get out during the rush hour and stay in the side street. It will not take a minute before you see a jeepney blowing fumes that you wonder how people nearby can still breathe easily. And we are not talking of only a few jeepneys here. Every day there are thousands of jeepneys out on Manila street.

Many Filipino environmentalists propose to scrap all jeepneys because they predict that in a few years Manila will be too polluted that Filipinos would have to buy bottled air like they buy bottled water now. Indeed, this is not a ridiculous idea. The idea of bottled water seemed ridiculous 10 years ago, but now we see bottled water is a necessity with the Philippine because the tap water here is too polluted for drinking. It may not be far from now when we see bottled air in the Philippines.

But cannot just take them out like the plague. First, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos rely on jeepneys as their mode of transportation everyday. Second, the jeepney drivers will instantly lose job. Is there any other solution?

There is a glimmer of light though. In Makati, the financial district of Manila, there are already a number of jeepneys that are running on electricity. The vision is to slowly convert the gas-powered jeepneys to electric-powered ones. They are called e-jeeps. They are they city’s answer to the worsening air pollution. There are only a handful of them today but let’s hope that the Philippine government follows the step of New Delhi wherein all public utility vehicles are now running on electricity.