The traditional jeepney does not belong on EDSA, C5, or Roxas Boulevard. It was never designed for highways — and mixing it with buses and trucks at speed is where the safety and congestion issues come from.

Remove it from those roads — not by banning it, but by giving those roads to BRT — and the jeepney finds its natural home: the barangay streets, the narrow collectors, the last-mile corridors where no articulated bus can go.

The jeepney is one of the most recognizable symbols of Filipino identity in the world. The hand-painted murals, the chrome horses, the names of saints along the side — these are a living folk art tradition born from repurposed WWII vehicles that became something entirely our own.

The so-called e-jeepney, frankly, is a different vehicle entirely — closer to a mini-bus or coaster in form and function. What the traditional jeepney actually needs is proper enforcement, safety standards, and route rationalization. Not replacement.