Traffic everywhere!

We are all resigned to Metro Manila’s heavy traffic as the Christmas season comes around. In the past, it is because those from the nearby provinces come here to do their Christmas shopping. But they now have their own SM malls in Pampanga, Laguna, Cavite and Batangas.

I guess it is mostly internally driven now from the over 10 million of us who live in Metro Manila. It is all those get-togethers and last minute shopping too. And there are also now more cars than ever and more unruly drivers as well.

All those traffic jams are costing us money. Direct losses due to traffic problems can be quantified in terms of wasted gasoline, lost labor hours, etc. The country in turn, suffers opportunity costs like the withdrawal of potential foreign investments, missed business opportunities and reduced capital inflow.

The losses due to traffic are estimated by experts at P150 billion in time savings per year, plus about P20 billion more in vehicle operating cost. I would add the physical abuse we all impose on our personal health from inhaling all that poisonous air as well as in our psychological well being.

We continue to suffer because we have refused to bite the bullet and do some very difficult but sensible things to make our worsening traffic problem bearable. We are satisfied with the coding scheme which only increases the number of cars. Street parking in our subdivision has increased over the past few years because the lot sizes and houses were not designed for more than two cars. Families now have three or four in reaction to the odd/even number coding.

Our worsening traffic problem is also due to inadequate planning of our business centers and that includes new business centers like the Bonifacio Global City. It makes no difference if it is government or private sector, it seems we are incompetent in properly planning our communities and the result is horrendous.

Yes, take Bonifacio Global City or BGC. It is supposed to be the City of the Future but anyone who drives there knows it has outlived its usefulness even for the present. It is becoming another Ayala business district with its horrible traffic jams and inadequate parking. It is almost as if the Ayalas didn’t learn from their mistakes in Makati.

BGC is just starting to fill up and yet it has at times become a hell hole as bad as its sister commercial district in Makati. A comment on a Facebook post of a picture of BGC bumper-to-bumper traffic on what looks like 5th Avenue had this to say: “because of developer’s greed… changed from a circular route traffic system, into a parallel-perpendicular, traffic system, it will only get worse.”

I am not an environmental planner so I don’t know if that is the reason for the traffic mess. But I have been complaining for the longest time to the Ayala folks about the traffic lights on that road from Market Market to St Luke’s and beyond to the overpass to Buendia.

How difficult is it to synchronize those traffic lights? It is so frustrating to get a green light at one corner only to be hit by the red light in the next. Of course 5th Avenue is worse and new developments like the new Shangrila hotel are not even up.

Then there is the Burgos Circle area where some popular restaurants are. Parking is now a serious problem. Megaworld and Ayala must realize the parking problem will eventually kill the business potential of this area. Indeed, even in the High Street area, parking is starting to get difficult. What used to be parking areas are now sprouting hotels and car display centers.

We used to think that the Fort Bonifacio area is so large that it is impossible to feel suffocated. But not any more. I don’t think the planners anticipated the number of cars and the number of people who will find their way into BGC in the course of a business day... or a weekend.

Indeed, it may make a lot of sense to have big parking buildings at the edges of BGC and an internal transport system within it… a monorail perhaps as was once proposed by Tong Payumo who was until the last election, the chairman of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA). The BCDA is the government agency with jurisdiction on former military base lands.

Like in any business district, Ayala Land must determine what they want to do with all those cars. Unless there are sensible rules about those cars BGC will be just like Makati CBD, Legaspi and Salcedo plus Divisoria. At some point, we are likely to need the Singapore solution which uses economics… a road tax to limit entry.

But the Singapore solution only works because Singapore has an awesome public transport system. We don’t have a good public transportation system anywhere in the metro area that can move people in and out of the business districts as well as within them fast and safely.

This is perhaps where the BCDA can now come in. The new chairman of BCDA is an old college friend of mine, Rollie Gosiengfiao and he may just be the man of the hour. Hong Kong-based for the longest time, Rollie has a solid background in investment banking and his international career has exposed him to the best practices abroad. I also like the refreshing way he thinks about problems like public transportation.

In a recent Facebook post on the subject, Rollie brought up the potentials of the Bus Rapid Transit as a better solution to the metro area’s public transport woes than all these expensive MRTs and LRTs. Rollie thinks there is also a win win solution vis-à-vis all those bus operators whose drivers simply can’t behave because they are on a boundary system.

Said Rollie: “Cities are for people, not cars. There are many doable ways to move people, and it is not necessarily LRT or MRT. I am not surprised that the Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit system has more people throughput than any MRT in the world.

“You could actually take out the rails and coaches in our present MRT/LRT system and instead put a rapid bus system on it and have a higher throughput at lower capital and operating costs. Same with PNR lines. It is not hard to imagine. Plus operate it 24 hours....

“That’s what they did in Bogota. The BRT Bus Company bought all the “boundary” so bus owners didn’t lose. Then the company took over the drivers at higher fixed pay. Then repainted the buses and put them under one scheduled bus system to meet the actual traffic demand based on traffic and volume patterns. No karera or harangan needed.

“You don’t even need special reticulated buses. Existing ones will be appropriate. And like elsewhere in the world, they didn’t put too many buses in one stop ... they designated more stops next to each other to handle the frequency of buses and loading/unloading time.

“And to pay for new elevated busways on top of smaller roads, you can create a Busway Fund to be funded by collecting for an annual special sticker/RFID card, say P50,000 a year, for all-day free access to CBD areas.

“No need for coding system which just increases the number of cars. With 100,000 cars trying to access the CBD areas, this would be P5 billion a year. Then DPWH/MMDA can build as many elevated busways as are needed. It would also mean less cars accessing the CBD areas.

“The Busway Fund can start at P26,000 a year (and raise annually till it hits P50,000). This is only P100 per working day.”

These are ideas off the top of Rollie’s head. I am sure that if the Aquino administration sets its mind on it and organizes a group headed by the BCDA chairman to work on such a solution, it can happen. Rollie is at least brimming with fresh ideas which one can’t say about the bureaucrats at DOTC and maybe, even NEDA that passes on their projects.

Given that none of the rail systems on DOTC’s planning board are going to get anywhere soon, P-Noy may perhaps want to talk with his BCDA chairman. He may risk being infected by Rollie Gosiengfiao’s tremendous enthusiasm, bias for action and learn from his experience but that’s a risk any President should gladly take.

Poor

 From the Professional Heckler.

The latest SWS survey showed one in four Filipinos remains poor. The other three are still in denial.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco