Everyday, day in and day out, we hustle to beat the struggles of commuting. We all want to get to our destinations on time and we all hurry to go home to our families. But should it be an excuse to ignore simple public transportation rules when the rest are doing their best to abide it?
A Facebook post by Nikko Dave Francisco questions our role as responsible commuters when he shared a photo of a woman who was clearly not following simple rules at MRT. “How hard is it to fall in line?,” Francisco asks on his post.
The woman in the photo stands on the supposed lane where passengers get off from the train. Noticeable in the photo are two big arrows painted on the floor, as well as two proper lines on both her sides, both of which would be impossible for her not to see.
Now, if you’re not used to commuting via MRT, here’s how it usually goes for its commuters: Passengers would have to line up in designated areas—there are two lines facing the doors of the train for passengers getting in, and there’s a space in the middle for outgoing passengers. MRT and its passengers are considerably more organized, compared to LRT 1 where it gets the better of its passengers.
According to Francisco, a security guard approached the lady but she just ignored the instruction. “She barged her way in while the passengers were getting off the train,” he says. He said he didn’t bother to call out the lady anymore because he’s too tired—and probably, so were the other passengers who decided to just let her be.
We always see these kinds of people everyday—those who always cut in line and try to get ahead of others. Francisco points out on his post that “…our culture tolerates people being “madiskarte” even they do it by taking advantage of others.” Sadly, this happens every time we “let things slip by.” We become these people when we grab the opportunity to take a shortcut and skip these rules just because we think nobody else would mind.
We all know how inefficient our transportation system can be sometimes and it won’t get better overnight. The thing is, it takes an effort on our part as commuters, too, to make things easier especially when the system has already failed us.
Being an irresponsible commuter and condoning indiscipline does not help our cause for clamoring for change.