First things first

Soon after Ramos gained the presidency in 1992, some concerned Filipinos got together to help chart a course for the country during his watch. The most pat-riotic of the group, a senior columnist for The Philippine STAR, hosted the dinner at his house and the excellent food, the fortifying spirits and the optimistic, gung-ho company made for one of those truly memorable and predictably rare evenings.

At some point, the newly reappointed public works secretary – an excellent human being and a certifiable Filipino, among the best of this rare species – expressed his optimism in the series of overpasses and flyovers that he had started building during the term of Ramos’ predecessor. These projects were going to be one of his continuing priorities as a cabinet member under the new administration.

He was most confident that Metro Manila traffic would improve dramatically on account of these physically facilitative structures. The flyovers and overpassses that his department fortunately had some funds to build and, more fortunate still, had built without the graft and corruption attending public works projects in this country – these structures cannot but work their wondrous miracles on Metro Manila’s much congested traffic.

Turning to a friend who was quietly relishing the now late evening’s strong, black coffee, the cabinet member asked for an opinion, fully expecting that it would be confirmatory of his own optimistic view. To his disappointment and to mostly everybody else’s surprise that evening, the friend expressed some reserve in sharing the secretary’s prognosis. An honest friend, if somewhat lacking in social correctness, he worried much that the human element – the drivers, the passengers, the pedestrians and the traffic enforcers – had not been paid enough attention.

His argument was simple. Without a proper understanding of the social context of any traffic situation, there would be insufficient incentives for people to prioritize the common objective of smooth traffic ahead of their individual, selfish wish to simply get ahead of another driver, passenger or pedestrian, or to evade a conscientious enforcer. Without sufficient knowledge of traffic rules and protocol, all those involved in traffic – the drivers, passengers, the pedestrians and the enforcers – will inevitably mess up the situation and paralyzing gridlocks would be the natural consequence of their shared ignorance. Without regular, willful and at times even forceful enforcement of the traffic rules, anarchy would rule; the lawless, after all, do gain immediate although not lasting advantages in making some headway in traffic and the lawful, seeing the immediate gains of those who flount the laws, become resentful at its fecklessness and eventually give up on lawfulness.

All attempts to regulate the physical environment of modern traffic without addressing the human beings themselves, the friend noted, are bound to fail. Without serious traffic education and minus effective enforcement, one can add more and more lanes to a road, build innumerable overpasses, underpasses and flyovers, proliferate traffic lights and other regulatory signs and even multiply the number of so-called traffic enforcers. Still no real or lasting improvement in traffic will obtain.

The cabinet member could not help chiding his friend for the latter’s apparent pessimism.

Just two years later, the same official sadly acknowledged to his friend that traffic appeared to be just as daunting as ever.

Now, more than a decade later, the mayors of Metro Manila and the Chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority are no longer talking about building more overpasses and flyovers. They now seek to improve the traffic by focusing on vehicles — when these will be allowed on the street depending on whether their license plates’ final numbers are odd or even, or whether they end in "1" and "2" rather than "8" and "9", or whether they are private cars or public utility vehicles. The MMDA’s magical incantation, its mantra as it were, is UVVRP – Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Scheme.

Good grief! Yet another MMDA try for a quick fix, instead of a truly enduring solution to Metro Manila’s traffic mess.

The ultimate solution to this chronic challenge cannot be in having more roads or less vehicles or even a combination of both. Daredevils behind the wheel, idiotic passengers and pedestrians and sunshine enforcers will always spell anarchy whether the roads or vehicles be more or less.

In the long term, human beings in traffic have to be patiently and persistently educated – an unavoidably extended process that makes them habitually functional in their relationships with each other, their roads and their vehicles. This kind of education probes the deepest meanings of social existence, clarifies the human need for pragmatic fellowship and argues the rational imperative for disciplined or lawful behavior by citizens conjoined in a productive society.

In the short term, civilizing Metro Manila traffic is an exceedingly severe challenge. There can be no effective alternative to summarily disciplining drivers, passengers, pedestrians and traffic enforcers. Highly predictable apprehensions and arrests, substantial fines and still more severe penalties – e.g. jail terms from at least six months to anywhere up to five years, the summary revocation of drivers’ licenses for a period of not less than a year, outright vehicular confiscation and perhaps even deliberate public humiliation for habitual offenders – these must be outcomes that those who dare corrupt a nation’s traffic cannot doubt will apply to them.

Even in the short term, traffic violators must be persuaded that MMDA can be serious about remedying Metro Manila’s traffic problems. MMDA does not always have to mean – with due apologies to our much maligned Muslim citizens – the Moro-Moro Development Authority.