The FS Gang strikes again!

That’s FS as in Feasibility Study. The bureaucracy, specially the one at DOTC, simply loves awarding feasibility studies. No harm done daw because it is normally JICA paying for it. But we could have asked the Japanese government to throw some of that money into something that will actually be useful for us.

Indeed, they have all sorts of JICA financed feasibility studies at DOTC. They have studied every conceivable problem in transportation. I even saw a JICA study on alternative airport sites within Metro Manila. One study proposes reclaiming part of Laguna de Bay for an international airport in Taguig.

So, when DOTC Sec Jun Abaya talked to reporters about putting up a subway system on EDSA and letting JICA finance the study, it was par for the course. It is something they do at DOTC, indeed, the only thing DOTC is capable of doing.

After I was done laughing out loud, I realized that Sec Jun Abaya didn’t actually propose to put up a subway system on EDSA. What he did was to ask JICA to study it. This will take years and hundreds of millions of pesos to accomplish. In the meantime, Sec Jun was able to throw a bone to a public increasingly mad at DOTC’s ineptness.

Of course the public was horrified, after they got over being totally amused at the subway story. Reading the comments on social media gives the impression of a public so thoroughly disenchanted with DOTC’s continued failure to deliver anything in the face of urgent and serious problems in the transport sector.

People found it idiotic to talk of a subway system now. More so because DOTC has not seen a clear way out of their legal and other problems so that MRT 3 could be expanded and made safer. There was also something disturbingly wrong with an agency talking of such a gargantuan project when it cannot even put up a decent toilet at NAIA 1.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of a subway on EDSA. Indeed, if there is some magical way to make that happen at the least disturbance to surface traffic, that would be great. But for an agency that cannot even conduct a successful bid for a fifteen-year old proposal to extend LRT 1 to Cavite, Sec Abaya has some nerve to propose putting up a subway system.

Maybe we ought to look at it very philosophically. If all we can expect from DOTC is to dream of needed infrastructure, we just might as well make our dreams bigger. Why dream of an improved MRT 3 when a subway is more First World? Dreams like words on a press release are free. Making those dreams come true requires a capable bureaucracy and that’s an even more impossible dream for us all.

Here is the comment of a friend of mine who is familiar with all of our broken dreams of infrastructure at DOTC:

“I hope Jun Abaya was misquoted. If not, he is a politician at heart – promising big things that can not be realized.

“In a recent JICA study for NEDA (in which I was a member of the consulting team), indeed, a subway system was identified as a long-term solution to the traffic problem of MMA. At the beginning of the study, Sec Singson asked the study team to sketch a ‘dream package’ that could solve traffic congestion.

“One of the components of that dream package is a subway system. Everybody got excited about it – especially, JICA who smelled an opportunity to promote Japanese business interests. Even our officials got excited –- forgetting that it would be useless without the other items in the package.

“It would take a network of more than 200 kms of new rail lines – of which the subway is only one of them. Reforming our bus and jeepney system is another necessary element.

“JICA immediately agreed to fund the feasibility study. Hence, the study will commence soon – about January 2014. We will know the viable alignment and phasing in 2015. It may or may not follow EDSA – but the major traffic generators (Makati, Ortigas, BGC) will be the key markets.

“Capital cost is huge, not almost the same as other modes of public transport, as Sec Abaya said. But it can be afforded – based on projection of government capacity in the next 15 years – IF our growth remains on the 6-7 percent range and investment allocations is raised to 3x the historical ratio to GDP.

“But the big question mark: do we have the capacity to implement 200kms of railway lines in 15 years? In the last 10 years, we have added only 4-km.

“The total urban rail network - built from 1981-2010 – is only about 50kms. That is an average of 1.5km per year. Assuming 2x improvement to 3km/year, the required 200-km can be built in 60 years! If we employ Mar’s team at DOTC, it may take 200 years.”

So that’s the reality to that press release of Jun Abaya. I don’t blame Sec Jun for dreaming. In fact, I thank him for giving us one good big laugh. But if he wants to stop his decline in credibility, he should be more careful about things like this. He should be careful of the FS Gang who make hundreds of millions of pesos making FS that will never see the light of day as a working project.

The focus of the DOTC Chief should be to get his Usecs off their collective butts and get those projects going. Anything else is nothing more than sheer propaganda which raises false expectations and creates the situation for a more drastic disappointment.

Sec. Jun is supposed to be a nice and intelligent person. We have seen the nice but the intelligent has to be shown as well. A Pisay scholar, as Sec Jun was, who has more than survived Annapolis must be extremely bright. Hopefully, politics didn’t reduce him to the level of the typical Pinoy politician. That would be a real Pinoy tragedy for our times.

Pork

Here is an expat’s view of pork.

Dear Boo,

Thank you for this excellent article along with the one you wrote the other day as an open letter to Senator Jinggoy Estrada; married to a Filipina and living here for many years, I also feel there is a great mood change; and sincerely hope, for the sake of our children, that real change will come about.

You make a point, or rather you question whether it is only the educated class that is up in arms; and in a sense I believe it is, or at least perceived so. But this is the fault of the message. Often the message is that the middle class bears the brunt of taxation; and because the poorer members pay little income tax as such, it is easy for the Robin Hood’s in the legislature to convey the message that they are only robbing the rich.

In terms of numbers it is the poorest in society who pay by far the greatest amount of taxation due to VAT.  It is they who spend a greater proportion of their income on food stuff and bare necessities, than other members of society, on which VAT is levied. They thus face a double whammy; first via their taxes, and secondly by the funds that are due to them but diverted into mansions and cars by this class of ‘nouveau riche’.

As one would expect, these Robin Hoods got the script wrong; he did not rob the poor.

Kind regards,              

Peke

Rufo Colayco sent this one to an e-group.

Raid sa Divisoria by NBI...

NBI: Fake mga bags na ito, ah !

Tindera: Hindi sir, lokal ang mga ito!

NBI: Lokal ang YSL?

Tindera: Oo naman, “Yari Sa Laguna”!

NBI Hmmm... Ang DKNY?

Tindera: Gawa sa “Divisoria Kanto Ng Ylaya”!

NBI: Ang GQ, local pa rin?

Tindera: Op kors! “Galing Quiapo”!

NBI: Lusot palagi ah… Eh ang Lacoste?

Tindera: Hay naku sir, yang buwaya? Galing Congress!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco