Photo: Maverick Rhoy De Vera
Tired.
Described in one simple word, it encompasses the struggles of every commuter who, day in and day out, fight for their place in line, bump passersbys, and squeeze themselves next to other passengers just to get to school or work, and do it all over again at the end of the day.
When asked about his commuting journey, Kurt Declaro, a student from Colegio de San Juan de Letran, simply stated how his day starts and ends “tired”.
Each morning, students like Declaro rise before the sun, not to chase dreams in comfort, but to chase buses, trains, and jeeps—often overcrowded, delayed, or worse, unavailable. The same hands that hold pens in pursuit of education also grip tightly onto railings and straps in a cramped MRT or LRT, fighting for space and balancing both themselves and the pressure of creating a future. There, the commute is no longer just a part of the day—it has become a battle of endurance.
Last September 20, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) released the anticipated Student Beep Cards that provided 50% discounted train fares.
Student Beep Cards can be acquired through visiting any LRT-1, LRT-2, or MRT-3 station. By showing a valid school ID or enrollment certificate to the station tellers with a one time fee of ?30, cards will be printed on the spot.
This initiative holds a promise of having a big impact on students’ financial burdens, making hundreds line up for its first and succeeding days, daily.
In The Chase of Race
Daily, students struggle to get inside moving trains, but this is not the start of the discomfort. It begins at the entrance of stations.
A student from Philippine Normal University, Rome Natividad, expressed that, “Before even entering the station, the feeling always hits that I should “race” with the others just to be on the line first.”
Like him, every commuter has to wake up hours earlier than their schedules and wrestle with other travellers, facing the challenges of their daily transportation experience.
More than this, the speed of the students is dominated by the number of commuters.
“I had to wait in long lines just to get a ticket. It was really tiring and inconvenient for daily commuting,” said Gwen Agustin from the Lyceum of the Philippines who lined up for the previous discounted single journey ticket for students.
“The biggest challenge was the long queues, especially during rush hour," shared by a scholar from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, John Elsisura, "sometimes the machines wouldn’t work, or they wouldn’t accept my bills—it slowed everything down," he added.
For students like Rome, Gwen, and John, the daily commute is more than just a means of transportation—it is a test of resilience.
Each morning begins not with calm, but with a race— against time, against crowds, and against a system stretched beyond its limits.
A Spare of Fare
Beep cards were made to make trains accessible for commuters without having to line up for single journey tickets that took time out of people’s already-tight schedules. The release of the discounted fare for students shows a significant contribution to their daily transport.
“Honestly, yung fare kasi balikan nasa more or less than 100 na nagagastos ko which is malaki na rin if icaca-calculate mo siya on a daily basis,” a student from National University, Ysabel Sullano, expressed, highlighting financial constraints before the release of student beep cards. “‘Pag uwian, [pag] nasaktuhan mo pa yung peak hours, siksikan talaga,” she added.
“The 50% less was extremely worth it. When I travelled to and from school, I paid 34 pesos, but because of the student beep card, I only pay 17 pesos now per ride,” stated Nathan Pore, a student from Adamson University, who affirmed the impact of the discount.
For a student who travels from Caloocan to PUP, Elsisura shared that, “My daily commute from Caloocan to PUP costs almost ?250, so the discount makes a big difference.”
For students with tight budgets, the student discount is a game changer. It not only eases the daily costs, but also makes public transport a more practical and accessible choice. More than this, “it can also encourage students to take public transport not just for school, but for trips to museums or other educational destinations,” Elsisura said.
To Care and Dare
LRTs and MRTs were created to improve the convenience of daily transportation and to manage rising pollution from private vehicles. In hopes of making public transportation more affordable and green-friendly, a step on modernizing the national transportation system manifested in encouragement of using trains.
However, students expressed that due to the discount, more passengers are now using the train, making it more difficult to board and fit in the vehicle as more people flock to this particular mode of transportation.
Moreover, students wish for a better system for its application.
“The processing was long and the amount given daily was limited. There was usually only one person/one teller doing all the registration and printing of beep cards per station, making lines long,” Pore mentioned. “They also have morning cut offs. [We need] more tellers per station, more printing machines, better queuing systems, or perhaps QR code links to answer needed information online, para yun nalang agad ipakita para maayos and hindi magahol sa oras,” he added.
The intention to modernize is clear, but without an efficient system to support it, the discounted fares offered relief also come with longer lines, fuller wagons, and the irony of convenience.
Although it is a great support to students by giving them the benefit of lower fares, the real issue lies within the transportation crisis in the country. The true problem is that students, employees, and everyday citizens continue to suffer from relentless traffic, an alarming shortage of public transportation, and a system that demands so much, yet gives so little in return.
Djenhard Sapanhilla, a student from the University of Sto. Tomas, hopes for a better transportation system.
“They say that the time we spend in the commute dampens the country's productivity and growth, and that statement is true. The time that could be spent studying, working, or just being at a place is rather spent in the confines of a vehicle,” stating the constraints of being a commuter.
“It is hard to be a student. It is hard to be a worker. It is even harder to be a commuter, ” Sapanhila expressed.
The discounted fare is a great step forward, but it is not the solution—it is merely a bandage on a system bleeding inefficiency. As long as hours are wasted in transit instead of in classrooms, workplaces, or with family, the nation’s potential continues to be restrained. In a country where it’s already hard to study and hard to work, the daily struggle to simply get there makes it even harder to hope for a future worth fighting for every day.
“No amount of student discount can augment lost time and energy to traffic—for lost time is a time lost forever; and depleted energy cannot be recouped when there's no time to recover, ” Declaro stated.
As a day of being a student in Intramuros or in other congested and hard-to-reach areas in Manila ends, there comes another beginning as a commuter.
Beyond the gates of their campuses, students are not just chasing dreams—they're surviving a daily marathon of a system that demands endurance.
A discounted ride for students may lighten their financial burdens, but it cannot shorten the distance between exhaustion and ambition. For as long as students race through chaos just to reach the classroom, the journey to education will remain the longest lesson.