Public transit enjoys an almost 80% share of trips in Metro Manila, and the most widely used is the paratransit vehicle called the jeepney. These 18- to 22-seat vehicles, which evolved from American army service jeeps left after World War II, provide inexpensive and convenient door-to-door service but cause disruptions in traffic flow because of aggressive and problematic driving behavior, particularly when stopping to pick up or unload passengers. Other vehicles are observed to experience delays, especially in the vicinity of midblock jeepney stops with high passenger demand. An overview of work done in building and validating a traffic microsimulation program focuses on modeling the distinctive stopping behavior of jeepneys that considers both transit vehicle and passenger agents. Propensity for nonobservance of lanes and aggressive lateral movements of general traffic are considered in the model. There is also a discussion of the result of simulation experiments that used the developed simulation model called JSTOPSIM and are designed to analyze trends on average vehicle delay experienced by through vehicles as passenger demand and volume of transit and non-public transit vehicles vary. The capability to quantify objectively delays attributable to jeepney stops is important in advocating policies to improve design and operation for the improvement of the public transit system as a whole.
