Planned mediocrity

For some time now motorists have enjoyed a respite from road diggings that cause heavy traffic on Sucat Road and Ninoy Aquino Avenue in Parañaque.

Sucat road, also named Dr. A Santos Avenue, was built about three decades ago through villages and the salt beds of Parañaque. Not too long ago Sucat Road and Ninoy Aquino Avenue formed a confusing patchwork of pavement, with short stretches of concrete abruptly blending into asphalt. Potholes and road diggings were filled in, it seemed, with whatever paving material was at hand.

These days the pavement is relatively smooth and there are no major road diggings. No one knows how long this respite will last. Throughout a typical year portions of the two merging avenues are constantly torn up and then repaired, including those that clearly need no tearing up. Other portions are dug up, restored roughly, then dug up again by different utility companies. Some of these restored portions start sinking after a few months, posing a danger to vehicles. Some dug-up portions take months to be repaired.

During the rainy season the mediocre quality of the pavement is evident. In the first heavy flood the two avenues disintegrate into a moonscape, with some of the potholes having edges so jagged they can tear an irreparable hole into car tires.

When the road is repaved or during major maintenance work, there is usually a billboard with the name and face of some politician claiming credit for it — usually a congressman proudly proclaiming that the work was financed using his Countrywide Development Fund. That’s the congressional pork barrel for you. The billboard never declares that the road repair is where taxes go, which is just as well, because if taxpayers realize that their money is wasted on substandard roads, the politician’s career will be over.

Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but the indiscriminate road diggings seem to become more numerous around Christmas time and during school enrollment periods.

Stuck in traffic along these merging avenues, I’ve often wondered how many children have been sent through college, some of them in expensive schools abroad, using kickbacks and commissions earned by their parents from the endless road diggings and repair.

Many roads across the country are in a similar sorry state — the result of haphazard development planning, corruption and politics.

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Contractors who pay off public officials to win lucrative deals take the cost of corruption out of the project cost. They not only cut corners to bring down costs, they also deliberately build substandard roads so they can be assured of contracts for regular repairs and other maintenance work. Planned mediocrity pays handsomely for these contractors.

Many years ago I asked a city engineer why the original asphalt pavement on what used to be known as Dewey Boulevard from Manila to Pasay was so durable while newer generations of pavement melted in a downpour. The engineer told me that to make durable asphalt pavement, the asphalt must be laid out in the warmest hours of the day. Yet how often have we seen asphalt being poured and steamrollered even in a drizzle on a cloudy day?

For concrete roads, contractors scrimp on metal braces or do away with them altogether. Some roads even in urban areas lack concrete curbs. After a few years, the road starts cracking or collapsing and must be torn up and repaved.

We have grown so used to these substandard roads that the only time we realize there is something wrong is when we go to other countries where people know how to build decent roads.

A few years ago I traveled by bus across a part of China. It took only about two hours to negotiate more than 200 kilometers of well-paved highway. The drive was so smooth I was able to write a thousand-word article by longhand.

In some of these countries, a contractor who builds a road that disintegrates in the first heavy rain will be executed, and his family will have to pay for the bullet.

In our country, such contractors enjoy the protection of those who walk the corridors of power.

Some provinces have been lucky to have roads financed by official development assistance and to have professional foreign contractors build the roads, as stipulated in the aid package.

A few years ago I drove through a highway that was being built by Koreans in Puerto Princesa City in Palawan and I wondered why we couldn’t build such roads. The pavement was so smooth but with sufficient traction for high-speed driving, the unfinished sections showed thick concrete, and I was told that the road was being built with a speed that is unusual in this country.

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In our country, we don’t even know which company is undertaking the numerous road construction projects and repair work. It is rare to see a sign identifying the contractor, which is understandable, considering the quality of the work.

Requiring all road projects to carry such signs could improve the quality of the product. The signs should also declare: This is where your taxes go.

And since that declaration will be there, politicians should be banned from putting their names and faces on billboards, taking credit for the road projects. It should be considered premature campaigning — an election offense that should carry a penalty.

Congress cannot be expected to pass any law banning that practice. But perhaps the Commission on Elections can step in.

Identifying contractors for every road project can be just one of the many steps to promote transparency and accountability in the implementation of government projects.

The other measures, particularly amendments in the government procurement law, must be acted on swiftly by Congress. But this is asking too much of our dishonorable congressmen. As of yesterday they were loudly pinning the blame for the World Bank road mess on — you guessed it — the World Bank.