Formalising the jeepney industry in the Philippines – A confirmatory thematic analysis of key transitionary issues

Jeepneys are paratransit vehicles which constitute the bulk of urban transport in many cities in the Philippines. There are around 179,000 jeepneys of which 90% are fifteen years or older. However, this is not without so many other issues on the road. To address this, the government issued a landmark policy enabling the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), a transformational large-scale initiative focused on land-based public transport in which the majority are jeepneys. The program brings about a comprehensive reform covering new policies in the franchising process, vehicle modernization, operator consolidation and changes in the current business model, financing and a more structured route planning process, among others. This is an ambitious undertaking, not merely because of its scale, but the likely disruption to the current, relatively informal model by which jeepneys are regulated. This paper uses deductive thematic analysis, based upon a review of the literature on informal/formal hybridised urban transport regulatory models, to investigate the reform's likely impact on the dynamics of the sector. As such it tentatively confirms the likely issues arising when transitioning from an informal model to a more formalised one. The paper raises imperatives for the global informal transport sector as a whole.