Proposal of Student Fare Discount Act

Senate Bill No. 1160

Honourable Manny Villar presented the Senate Bill no. 1160 on the 15th congress of the Republic of the Philippines indicating the privileges that students must be granted. According to Villar (2012), students must be discounted in different expenses such as in reading materials, vehicle fares, hospital rate, school supplies, as well as in admission fees to stage theaters, galleries, and museum. Furthermore, the tuition fee in the Philippines ascends yearly and most of the students that graduated belongs to the fortunate people.

Thus, many of the students were dropped out but with the help of this law, students and their parents' expenses will be lessen (Villar, 2012).

Senate Bill No. 662

Former senator Paolo Benigno Bam A. Aquino introduced Senate Bill No. 662 in the 17th congress of the Philippines. Aquino (2016) stated that the said bill must be implemented in the whole country as it would be a great help for every student around the Philippines. Furthermore, students, especially in rural areas, walked approximately five kilometers when going to school and tricycles, as their alternative, is costing a lot.

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Nevertheless, weather in this country is unpredictable, it can be too hot or if not, heavy rains occur and students will be a bit confused weather to continue being in school or not (Aquino, 2016).

Aquino (2016) added that student must be given 20% discount on any transportation such as on land, water and air every day of the year if he presented a valid proof of enrolment on any local school. In addition, the transportation providers that violate the said law will be given a stricter penalties as one of the objective of this law (Aquino, 2016).

House Bill No. 6636

Paralaque first district representative Eric L. Olivarez initiate House Bill No. 6636 on 24th of October, 2019 in 17th Congress of the Philippines. Olivarez (2017) emphasized that LTFRB's Memorandum Circular 2017-024 (MC 2017-024) is commendable and a great help for student-commuters. Nonetheless, the said MC is not enough to provide privilege in rail transit such as Metro Rail Transit (MRT), Light Rail Transit (LRT), and the likes. Additionally, transit transportation is part of Department of Transportation (DOTr) and not in LTFRB. Furthermore, thousands of students, especially in urban areas, uses transit as their daily transportation in going to schools because it's not costly and there is no occurrence of traffic in this transportation medium. A 20% discount will be a huge contribution in their financial assistance (Olivares, 2017).

The role of bus drivers on social role

Gregory (2017) stated that bus drivers does not just play a vital social role in driving and transporting commuters but they also contribute to community functions such as public safety, social inclusion or the improvement for ability, opportunity and dignity, and tourism. Just like how they provide attendees of a night-time economy a safe travel and also the one to improve the socioeconomically disadvantaged group's access in education and employment opportunities (Tillmann, Haveman, Stoppler, Kvas, & Monninger, 2013 as cited in Gregory, 2017). Thus, Gregory (2017) concluded that bus drivers invested a part to the longer term of social and economic sustainability of communities at the same time, underscoring their occupation's public service role.

Attitudes of drivers on the road

Jain, Calvert, Clayton, and Parkhust (2017) collected a total of 72 articles from academic journal papers, government reports and other published articles of 2000 through the Literature Review 2010 and 2007 to distinguish and emphasize gaps and knowledge from existing research that will be examined in the workshops reported in the second report, and theories that supports the interpretation of the driver's attitudes and behaviours. Jain et al. (2017) mentioned the attitudes of drivers on risk stated in Literature Review 2010 which mainly focus on speed and emphasized a number of key issues like drivers denying they're part of the problem and road rules.

The first problem is that road users or drivers pass the blame of being a problem to the people in the streets and commuters instead of them because according to Literature Review (2010 as cited in Jain et al., 2017), driving behaviours are affected by the identities or personality types of the passengers and on safety. Furthermore, driving attitudes and behaviours are affected by the level of experience and the oftentimes of driving taken like drivers whose been working regularly. Behaviours and attitudes of the drivers depends and varies also on where the context is, some tends to drive carefully on crowded urban streets than a wide rural street despite of this signs on urban streets are denied to be supported and followed by drivers. Biographical profile is also an issue as men are identified to take the risk like surpassing the speed limits, particularly young men, than women who mostly are expected to follow the rules on the road and older men drivers who drive more carefully to keep their driver's license with them (Jain et al., 2017).

Jerusalem (2017) reported that Public Utility Drivers Academy Program or PUDAP of LTFRB is the requirement that needed to be attended by PUV drivers, was launched last August 17 in all parts of the Philippines. With this, PUV drivers are reviewed with the knowledge of traffic rules and they need to pass a five modules tackling the terms of the condition of their franchise, road safety, good driving habits, road rage and anger management, traffic signs and pavement markings (Jerusalem, 2017).

Satisfaction of passengers on train fares in Australia

Paramita, Zheng, Haque, Washington, and Hyland (2018) stated that commuters used their satisfaction to evaluate their loyalty in riding a public transport vehicle which is important, however, most of the published studies about this are interpreted through a survey data collected only in one city. Thus, a study was conducted that addressed the satisfaction of train passengers with the fare they paid in trip on five capital cities of Australia such as Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane. Survey across the country and the train fare structure's objective information of the five cities were used by the researchers to obtain data.

Socio-economic factors and characteristics of a train trip functioned through the modelled satisfaction with fare which includes a random parameters with Logit model that figured out the unnoticeable heterogeneity in the population. Paramita et al. (2018) enumerated the key determinants that were indicated in the results which are the gender, city where the respondent came from, transporting from home going to train station, eligibility for either student or senior citizen's fare, one-way cost, and waiting time and also a five different interaction variables between city of origin and socio-economic factors.

Through an intercity comparison, it is revealed that the fair structure of the city's train has an impact to the satisfaction level of the passengers with the fare and the study also revealed an eminent heterogeneity as female respondents felt less satisfied with the amount of train fare specifically one-way trip and waiting time than the male respondents (Paramita et al., 2018). Additionally, the number of respondents riding a bus to arrive at the train station who felt satisfied with the fare are greater than the other respondents. Policy makers and transport operators can use the findings examined by the researchers as it will make them understand more the behaviours of the passengers and at the same time can formulate effective transit policies.

Benefits of Student Fare Discount Act

Privilege of having a discount in public transportation's fare are given to senior citizens, Person with Disability or PWD and students. Zoleta (2019) emphasized that this is entitled to them because it can help them saving their money and also makes their allowance last. Zoleta added that saving money is very important to students who have no source of income yet and remarked that students must take advantage with the discount by bringing and wearing their school I.D as every peso that is save counts (2019). It can avail every day of the week and it is year-round discount. This discount is for all the Filipino students except for those enrolled in dancing, skydiving, and driving lesson and many more (Rodriguez, 2019).

Advantage of Student Fare Discount Act to students

It is accessible for students to ride a public transportation vehicle rather than having their own vehicle as it will lessen the traffic and at the same time they will also save money since each students have a 20% discount in every public transportation as long as they have an identification card or a current validated enrolment forms to present to the drivers. (Gonzalez, 2017). Senator Sonny Angara (2019) proposed this kind of privileged to the students because half of the students allowance is allotted on fares (as cited in Cervantes, 2019). A couple of change came from fares will be used as additional source to school projects (Angara, 2019).

Perceptions of Students in Student Fare Discount Act

Son (2019) explained the total expenses of everyday commuting of May Flores back and forth from University of the Philippines (UP) to their house. Additionally, 3 students were asked to tell a brief insight regarding to the Student Fare Discount Act. The first student stated that it's favourable wherein it will reduce the expenses specifically in fare even just a little. The other two students stated that even if the discount is just a peso in a long run you can earned and used it in important thing particularly in school projects. School services, Shuttle and Tourist services is not include in discounts.