I always thought that Philippine Jeepneys were a bit a, well, low type of transportation, something that could be improved. But the more I use them, and lately I have been using them a lot, also e.g. in rush hour, the more I believe they are not as bad as I thought, or actually they are quite fit for what they are supposed to do: move people with their stuff on short or medium distances.
As I the last few days I have been comparing them to Dutch buses and the van’s I saw being used in Indonesia, and realized that the design is pretty good, very useful to move people from one place (in a city) to another. And yes, they are very stable and fit very well the culture where people prefer to sit tight together.
And I always thought they were too heavy, built with too much steel and such, but looking at the fact that they move like twenty people at the same time with kind of normal car components, the design is pretty straightforward and probably not as heavy as I thought (related to e.g. fuel consumption). And yes, the design, like any Jeep, is very simple, easy to build and to maintain, and very sturdy.
So yes, the way they are normally built, from old car parts that don’t always function that well, is certainly not what one would want in the Western world. But the design, the basic idea, the basic concept is very good, so if Jeepneys would be built from scratch with new components I wouldn’t know any better public transport vehicle that would do its job as well as the Philippine Jeepney.