Shutdown

No, we are not referring to the inexplicable outages of power plants that, over the past few days, brought the rotating brownouts ahead of schedule.

What should have been done to avert the forthcoming shortages and power rationing ought to have been done four years ago. They were not. Only sheer incompetence explains that.

Not only will power become inadequate in the coming weeks, they will also be more expensive. This is because the power crisis forces us to put the old and inefficient plants back to duty.

It is also because, as supply diminishes, there will be pressure at the wholesale market for prices to rise. Do not blame abstract “market forces” for the rising price of a prime commodity. The structural deficiencies of our power sector, compounded by incompetence, nearly guarantees power costs here will remain among the highest in the world.

Instead, we are referring here to proposals to shut down MRT-3, a critical conveyance serving 600,000 disgruntled commuters daily. That is nearly twice the design capacity of this system. Those are 600,000 lives daily put at risk by the horribly maintained and seriously decrepit rail line.

Over the past few weeks, the condition of MRT-3 has moved from bad to worse. Breakdowns happen nearly every day. Less than half of the original trains are actually operational.

The word “operational” might be imprecise. The trains still running leak when it rains. They creak when they move. Often, the air conditioning conks out. They stop impulsively for the most mysterious reasons – as we saw early this week when passengers were thrown forward, resulting in injuries.

On days when the trains decide to be benign, they just quietly refuse to run. On bad hair days, they ram through barriers to rejoin street traffic.

Metal fatigue set in on the rails themselves. They are brittle and prone to breaking. A derailment due to broken rails could send packed trains crashing down on vehicles below. At least that would be an interesting event, breaking the monotony of crawling down Edsa at a pace that seems to get slower by the day.

Funny, the government agency charged with operating this rail line even if it does not have the expertise to do so, has not procured new rails. Instead, when a piece of rail shows cracks, MRT-3 filches rails from the LRT depot.

Late last year, the DOTC finally agreed to have the MRT-3 subjected to audit by experts imported from the Hong Kong rail service. In their report, the experts said the line has become unsafe. It should be closed down and rehabilitated.

They were being so polite. Based on the findings, had I written the report, the recommendation should be to lynch DOTC Secretary Jun Abaya and all his undersecretaries, preferably from the Ortigas station where the line is at its highest point and the rail turns sharply, creating the greatest danger of derailment.

The MRT-3 started this week with four interruptions in service on Monday. On Tuesday, one train stopped suddenly. On Wednesday, power fluctuated so much a trains had to be sent back home to the North Avenue depot from Baclaran.

One rail expert was driven to air his recommendation that MRT-3 be shut down on Sundays. This will allow the maintenance provider to do necessary repairs.

That proposal of course presumes the existing maintenance provider (there have been no bidders to replace them) has the expertise and the resources to undertake the major rehabilitation work that needs to be done. The bald truth is: they don’t.

Even if we shut down the MRT-3 line half the week over the next few months, there is simply neither the expertise nor the spare parts nor the budget to acquire a new signaling system to restore MRT-3 from worse to merely bad.

Since they are doing nothing to improve the service, the DOTC should at least be courteous enough to put up a sign at every station. The sign should read: Ride at your own risk.

Another respected expert said the MRT-3 should simply be closed down, as the Hong Kong experts recommend. It is simply too perilous to continue using. Besides, fare was recently raised while service just got worse. That is an injustice.

Shutting down the MRT-3 is the easiest part. But what do we do about the 600,000 passengers who depend on this line daily to get to work?

600,000 seems to be just the right number to mount an insurrection in the metropolitan area. That will test Abaya’s much vaunted “political will” – the virtue he invoked when he arbitrarily raised fare without consulting the commuters.

If MRT-3 is shut down, there will be pure chaos in the streets below. The entire capital region will be paralyzed. The economy (the same economy whose growth President Aquino blames for the traffic situation) will be deeply injured. The quality of life of 12 million residents of the Gates of Hell will drop from bad to worse.

Asked about the proposals to shut down the rail system for repairs, Abaya put up a tough front. He said the system was safe. He will not hesitate, he says, hinting at summoning his much-vaunted “political will,” to shut down the system if there are signs it is unsafe.

What more signal is he waiting for? Does he want the heavens to open up and ten thousand angels descend to proclaim his beloved rail line decrepit?

What will convince him to finally goad his department to finally prepare to undertake a major rehab job on the line? A train falling from above?