Commuting Made Easier and Safer...and more Humane...with UBER!

A few weeks ago, a friend and colleague that I had worked on a book with was robbed, stabbed 7 times,  and left for dead.  She had been riding in a Dean taxi, and was attacked by the driver who was apparently in cahoots with two muggers, and who were now officially homicidal psychopaths still at large.

That story left me frazzled, and I worried about commuting through the occasional taxi.  Yellow cabs were a New York fantasy, and stately London cabs were not within consideration.  Horror stories also abounded about the notorious peace and order situation in the country...and the escalation of crime because of the forthcoming elections, yadayadayada!  More so because for someone like me, driving in Manila was like being let loose in a congested snake pit, it sometimes made no sense to try to traverse the maze that was the metropolis.  More so because commuting meant driving one less car, and doing my small deed for the environment.  More so because finding parking was getting to be like finding the Holy Grail.

Taxis in Manila were a caveat emptor experience...ride at your own risk.  First of all, most taxis were dirty, dingy, and often dilapidated. Second, the drivers  were inconsiderately and arrogantly choosy about their passengers.  Third, they drove like madmen possessed, and could easily cause motion sickness for the hapless passenger. Finally, you never knew if you would come out alive...or dead?  It was becoming increasingly clear that Manila could be a dangerous place to be in, whether you drove your own car, or commuted.

Yet commute inevitably, if occasionally, I must and would have to.  But how to ensure that I would get to my destination in one piece, or at all?

Then I discovered UBER.  Yes, fifty something technosaur me discovered and downloaded the UBER app pretty much by myself!  And it has opened my eyes to a whole new standard of ease and safety in commuting via taxis.

So what is UBER?  UBER is a fleet of cars driven by owners or select drivers designed to help passengers get from place to place, using the app connected to a smartphone.  With the phone, you key in your pick up point, and your desired destination, and it identifies a car and driver by name, model, and plate number nearest to you to do the job.  The more specific the location,  the better for pick up and the better to bring you to your desired destination. No money changes hands...all is charged to the credit card you registerwhen you download the app.  Clean, practically mint condition vehicles service the UBER passenger, driven by the owners themselves or drivers they have tested and are sure of.  You had a choice of UBER X--mostly sedans(with a flag down of Php 40) or Black cars-- mostly SUV's, black of course, with a flag down of Php 90.  At the end of the trip, a notice containing the total fare that would be charged to your card is emailed to you.

With these features, UBER is efficient and safe, a welcome respite from the pig sties and danger trap that many of the other taxis seem to be.  It felt good to be riding in a clean vehicle, where the air-conditioning actually works, the radio works when you ask for it,  and the driver is polite and neat, and no one is about to jump you and render you as chopped liver.

My first experience with UBER was most pleasant.  A clean shaven driver named Rosauro Navarro Chan who was unfailingly polite and soft spoken handled the vehicle, a sparklingly spotless black Hyundai Tucson SUV, with license plate NIG 171. He took me where I wanted to go, without complaint or flak, driving as smoothly as possible on Manila's streets, and kept up a pleasant steady stream of conversation with his courteous "ma'ams" interjecting his stories and answers to my questions.  I got to my destination on time, not at all frazzled, and coolly, serenely ready for my next meeting.

Rosauro had an iPad with a micro sim connected to the dispatch center that could at a moment's notice link him up to a passenger in need.  There was no meter, only a radio that played music unobtrusively...or not at all, if you so desired.

I could not leave well enough alone.  I decided to engage the driver in conversation.  It was a little tactic some taxi passengers in Manila employed partly to pass away the inordinate amount of time spent going through traffic,  partly to disarm the driver, to forestall (uselessly, I might add) any ill intentions, and partly out of sheer nosiness.

He was paid a salary of Php 14000 a month, with a little more added as incentive for making up to 18 trips a day.  It was more than he would earn as a taxi driver or in any other job he had had till then...and he was spared the idea of prohibitive "boundary fees" and the endless costs and concerns that the usual taxi drivers in Manila had to worry about.  The salary maybe helped him stay on the straight and narrow and provided no reason why there would be a need to succumb to felony to feed his family or his fancy.

He was 25 years old, newly married, and about to be first time father of a baby girl, whom, he and his wife, a nurse, had decided they would name
Aura Sofia.

He was the youngest of three siblings, an orphan now, and did not complete his college studies in favor of a year and a half stint in Dubai as an ambulance driver.  It was a prolific and productive stint, as he was able to save up to buy and build a modest home for his budding family, and enough of an incentive for him to want to go back.  After his return to Manila, he worked at a number of odd jobs, none for very long, and largely because the pay was not enough for his plans and the future he had in mind.  One odd job he felt fulfilled doing though in Manila was as a rescue driver... yet he was nonetheless frustrated because for back breaking work and 24/7 attention, they were always late for the emergencies.  He and his wife, a nurse, had also volunteered to help give relief to typhoon Haiyan stricken Tacloban...and he revealed that caring for people was his avocation.  I couldn't believe my ears!  Somber conversations with taxi drivers in the past had filled me with a grudging respect for this profession...but this information renewed my respect for and hope in humankind in general!

Yes, UBER had improved my notion of taxis with this one trip....  I loved the cleanliness, the courtesy, the precision, and the welcome anonymity of an unmarked car ( I knew too well how many an uneducated security guard of gated communities and hotels looked down upon the taxi and the passenger within.) Yet Rosauro, the driver, by simply doing his job, and being his compassionate, idealistic self in an unlikely setting, had TRANSFORMED my opinion about an otherwise jaded Metro Manila.  As the title of the book goes, "There's hope for the flowers...."

And Manila seemed like a nice place to live in again.