IMPACT OF COVID-19 AMONG PUBLIC COMMUTERS IN COTABATO CITY

CHAPTER I

PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

In recent decades, Asia has experienced rapid development of

industrialization and urbanization, which has resulted in accelerated growth of

many suburban cities surrounding large metropolitan areas. These suburbs

are home to many who work in metropolitan areas, causing a tremendous

number of suburban residents each day to commute to the city for work. As a

consequence, urban areas are experiencing increasing automobile use,

resulting in congestion and long hours of commuting. The increasing severity

and duration of traffic congestion greatly intensify pollutant emissions and

degrade air quality. It is of tremendous concern that commuters are exposed to

high concentrations of atmospheric pollutants, originating from both vehicular

traffic and other urban, industrial, or environmental factors, during their

transit. They are exposed during their daily commute while in vehicles, waiting

for transportation and walking. Most commuters spend considerable time at

bus stops and stations or walk on busy roads. It was reported commuters who

travel by public transport may be exposed to up to eight time as much air

pollution as those who drive to work.

 Experts say that the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-

19 is to stay at home. But some people still need to go out of their home –

commute to work, go grocery shopping or run important errands.

As the country eases out its restrictions, we expect to see more people go

about their way through the available public transport or through other means

like private cars, bikes and motorcycles. Yet the question needs to be asked:

How do you ensure a safe commute during the COVID-19 pandemic? The bad

news is, there is always a risk of getting sick when going out and about in the

“outside world” – the extent of which depends on many factors. But the good

news is that keeping yourself coronavirus-free isn’t an all-or-nothing game.

There are still many ways that you can protect yourself and significantly lower

the risk of contracting COVID-19 when heading out.

Earlier this year, the Taguig Integrated Terminal Exchange (Taguig ITX),

a government initiated project by the Department of Transportation (DOTR),

held its groundbreaking ceremony. Expected to be completed in 2020, this

massive project is adjacent to ARCA South, and is being built with the objective

of improving the quality of commuting in the city. Indeed, the Taguig  ITX

project is looking to be quite a promising project for the Philippines, a country

in which public transportation systems are a crucial, indispensable part of

everyday life.
While there are certain advantages to owning and driving your own vehicle,

public transportation systems present numerous and undeniable advantages

to both commuters and to the community as a whole. Here is a list of reasons

why buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation remain an integral

fixture in Philippine society — and why it is wise not just to use them, but to

invest in them as well.

As any regular commuter would agree with, riding buses and trains involves

plenty of walking. This comes with the rather beneficial side effect of increasing

the amount of physical activity that the average commuter does, particularly

when compared to a vehicle owner who drives instead of availing public

transportation. Additionally, though it may sound hard to believe at first,

public transportation can also reduce stress levels by providing easier access to

health and recreational services, or by making travel easier in general.

Consider the aforementioned ITX project by ARCA South, for example, which

will make it easier for people across the Philippines to enjoy the sights, sounds,

and experiences in different parts of the country, no matter where they’re

coming from. Beats having to drive for hours all by yourself just to go from one

place to another, doesn’t it?

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The study investigated the impact of COVID-19 among public commuters

in Cotabato city during as well as to identify the factors affecting the public

commuters during pandemic.

To achieve the foregoing purpose, the study sought the answers of the

following specific problems:

1. What are the socio-demographic of the respondents?

a) Name(optional)

b) Age.

c) Sex.

d) Civil Status.

e) Religion.

f) Educational Attainment.

2. There is a problem about the fares of the public transportation

vehicles?

3. What are the problem encountered by the respondents?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This study is base in 1980 the then Transport and Road Research

Laboratory, now the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), published a

collaborative report: The Demand for Public Transport (Webster and Bly, 1980).
This report, which became widely known as “The Black Book”, identified many

factors which influence demand and where possible, given the limitations of

the data that were available for analysis, quantified their effects. The Black

Book subsequently proved to be of great value to public transport operators

and transport planners and policy makers. However, in the following 20 years

there has been a great deal of change in the organisation of the passenger

transport industry, the legislative framework under which it operates, in

technology, in the incomes, life-styles and aspirations of the travelling public,

in car ownership levels, and in the attitudes of policy makers. While these

changes have not invalidated the general conclusions of the Black Book, they

will have reduced the relevance to modern conditions of much of the

quantitative analysis. The new collaborative study, of which the result in this

paper are a part, was therefore set up to take account of another 20 years’

worth of public transport information, and more recent advances in transport

research techniques.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

On these bases of these study, the conceptual paradigm of this study is

illustrated in Figure 1.

DIPENDENT VARIABLE INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

- Expensive
transportation fares.
- Social distancing
EFFECT TO THE - No face shield, no ride
COMMUTERS

Figure 1 – Research Paradigm

As an independent variable, impact of COVID-19 among public

commuters in Cotabato city is the problem how inconvenient to the public

commuters.
Scope and Limitation of the study

This study sought to examine what are the impact of fares among public

commuters in Cotabato city during Covid-19.

Significance of the Study

The gathered information may help the public commuters to know the

problems they usually encounter in public transportation during COVID-19.

With this, they will become knowledgeable in addressing these problems, and

they might possibly avoid such problems. This will also help the public

commuters to become knowledgeable and understand why so many problems

in public commuting during this pandemic. The study is also important to the

people because the drivers will be able to provide them better service if they are

able to prevent the occurrence of the problems being encountered. In this case,

there will be no problem in the public transportation.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

The following terms are defined operationally and conceptually to

properly guide the readers of this study:

COMMUTERS - a person who travels some distance to work on a regular basis.

Expensive transportation fares – it refers to high fees for public vehicle.

Social Distancing – Social distancing, also called

“physical distancing,” means keeping a safe space between yourself and other

people who are not from your household. To practice social or

physical distancing, stay at least 6 feet (about 2 arms' length) from other

people who are not from your household in both indoor and outdoor spaces .

No Face shield, no ride – it refers to the LTO policy.

Fare - the money a passenger on public transportation has to pay.

 CHAPTER II

REVIEW RELATED LITERATURE

Since the outbreak of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID19), many

provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China have launched

level-1 responses to major public health emergencies. According to the Law of

the PRC on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Emergency

Response Law of the People's Republic of China and other relevant laws and

regulations, traffic control measures have been taken in these regions, such as

closing off external passageways, banning public transportation and

nonessential travel, so as to minimize the flow of people and prevent the rapid

spread of the virus. During the period of traffic control, except for the

production of medical supplies such as masks and disinfectant water, and the

production of food supplies such as grain, oil, meat, eggs and vegetables, the

whole society basically stops production and the development of socio-economy

comes to a standstill (Anhui Network, 2020; Sohu Network, 2020a). In order to

minimize the impact of the COVID-19 on the socio-economy, starting from mid-

to-late February 2020, many enterprises have been returning to work. At this

time, the COVID-19 pandemic is not fully under control, and the return peak

will bring huge pressure to the transportation system. Zhou (2020) believed

that in the continuous spread period of the virus, it is necessary to do a good

job in traffic restriction and orderly organization, limiting the density of people
flow in the traffic hubs, limiting the non-essential travel, organizing

personalized travel, and organizing special bus lines for commuters.

The local transportation departments have also adopted corresponding

emergency measures according to the severity of the local pandemic. Because

COVID-19 is highly contagious and has a long incubation period, if the case

has been in contact with patients with fever 14 d before the onset of the case,

or it is a cluster case, with the symptoms of fever, imaging features of COVID-

19, and a significant decrease in the total number of white blood cells, it will be

judged as a suspected case. Suspected cases have the risk of contracting the

new corona virus to other passengers taking the same vehicle during their

travel. Therefore, tracking the trajectory of the suspected cases is an important

part of preventing the serious spread of COVID-19. In order to track the

trajectory of suspected cases effectively, Xi'an Bus, which builds an public

transport system by virtue of “Internet þ” and reaches a sharing rate of ground

traffic to 48%, requires bus passengers to use mobile phones, staff verification,

information upload and other methods to register their real names from

February 10th (Huanqiu Network, 2020; Huashang Network, 2019). From

February 16th, bus, subway and taxi passengers are required to register their

real names in Nanjing and Suzhou (Longhu Network, 2020; Suzhou

Government, 2020). In addition to the real name registration, Shenzhen Metro

has suspended the sale of one-way tickets and daily tickets (Sina News, 2020).

In order to limit the population density in public transport, passengers in

Beijing Subway can check the real-time full load rate in the carriage through
the official website, WeChat public account, and APP (Sohu Network, 2020b).

Bus groups of Beijing, Chengdu and Hefei are collecting the travel needs of the

general public. By collecting information of citizens' departure stations,

departure times and destination stations, they can customize commuting

routes for citizens to ensure their safety (Sohu Network, 2020c, d, e). Among

them, Chengdu and Hefei are the capitals of Sichuan and Anhui provinces

respectively. Chengdu City has 786 bus routes, including night buses, campus

buses and sightseeing routes (Zhongyan Network, 2019). Hefei City opens 52

customized bus lines in regular days, but the customized bus load rate is only

40%e50% (Netease Network, 2019). The establishment of customized bus

routes during the COVID-19 pandemic can not only provide convenience for

commuters, but also raise the popularity of customized buses and attract

citizens and enterprises to use customized buses in regular days.

Regarding the research on urban traffic control measures during the

COVID-19 pandemic, D.Z. Liu, director of the China Sustainable Cities

Program at the World Resources Institute, suggested that people who

commute for short and medium distances should try to commute by bike and

save public transport for those who need to commute for long distances to

ease the pressure on public transport (Sohu Network, 2020f). Zhou et al.

(2020) suggested that rail transit adopt a suspension of subway operations

strategy, a compartment isolation pandemic prevention strategy, and a

demand response pandemic prevention strategy to play the important role in

transportation and emergency-response during the COVID-19 pandemic

period. Liu et al. (2020) proposed to further optimize the operation

organization of public transport lines, allocated special bus lines for medical

personnel and emergency rescue personnel and used big data and advanced

detection technology to establish an early warning mechanism for real-time

passenger flow monitoring and analysis.

 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Presented in this chapter is the methodology of the study which consists

of the research design, locale of the study, respondents, instrumentation, data

gathering procedures and statistical treatment of the data.

Research Design

This study used the descriptive type of research to determine the impact

of COVID-19 among public commuters in cotabato city, in conducting this

study, survey questionnaire is the main instruments in gathering data of the

study.

The researcher prepared a sample survey questionnaire from the

theoretical framework of the study and presented it to research adviser for

comments and suggestions that would make the questionnaire acceptable to

the respondents.

Locale of the study

This study is conducted were Cotabato city.

Data Gathering

A 30 pieces of survey questionnaire will be distributed to the respondents

that willing to answer the questionnaire about the impact of COVID-19 among

public commuters in cotabato city. The respondents will be given a time to

answer the questionnaire and it will be retrieved personally by the researcher.

A random interview will be done to validate the perceptions of the respondents

and also observation was conduct.

Respondents

The respondents of this study will be 30 residences of Cotabato city.

Sampling Technique

Random sampling was used in determining the sample respondents of

the study. Furthermore, total complete enumeration will be used as sampling

technique for the respondents. Stratified sampling technique will be used to

determine the residence of the Cotabato city respondents.

Research Instruments

A self-made questionnaire will be use in this study to elicit the

information from the respondents. The instruments will be composed by two

parts. Part 1 residence of Cotabato city. Further, Part 2 will elicit the impact of

COVID-19 among commuters in Cotabato city.

 Survey Questionnaire

Direction: Please answer the following accurately. Kindly check your choice

from the blank that best describe you.

Part I: Socio-demographic Profile

1) Name (optional):

2) Age:

3) Gender: M: F:

4) Civil Status: Single: Married: Sepparated:

5) Religion: Islam: Catholic: others(specify):

6) Educational Attainment:

Elementary level: Elementary Graduate:

High School level: High School Gradute:

College level: College Graduate:

Others(specify):

Part II: Below are the statements that whould subscribe the effectiveness

of the performance of the Barangay Offials delivery of public services in

the Brangays of Cotabato city.

4.Very effective 3.Effective 2. Less effective 1.ineffective

A). Expensive Transportation Fares

1. The transportation fees is extremely high. 4 3 2 1

2. Are you agree to the expensive transportation fees? 4 3 2 1
3. The commuters are favor for the high transportation fees. 4 3 2 1
4. It is right to the commuters to pay expensive transportation 4 3 2 1
fees?
5. The expensive transportation fees is enough to sustain the 4 3 2 1
drivers need.

B). Social Distancing

1. The social distancing is followed by the commuters? 4 3 2 1

2. Limited Passenger in every public vehicle. 4 3 2 1

3. Commuters are comfortable riding in public vehicles. 4 3 2 1

4. It is favor for the Commuters? 4 3 2 1

5. 6 to 8 passenger is the limit of the one public vehicle. 4 3 2 1

C). No Face shield, No ride

1. Commuters can ride without face shield. 4 3 2 1
2. It is the policy followed? 4 3 2 1
3. The drivers of public vehicle is wearing face shield. 4 3 2 1
4. It is help to prevent the COVID-19 infection? 4 3 2 1
5. The passenger will be penalize if he/she not follow the policy. 4 3 2 1