I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, nothing is going to truly change in the Philippines if we don’t change it at the roots. It’s easy to implement a few programs here and there and see a bit of improvement, but it won’t be long before people get complacent once again and we end up right back where we started. In some cases, we even end up worse off than we were before.
A perfect example of this is the ongoing traffic catastrophe plaguing the city. Last week we seemed to reach an apex of bad traffic which found people stuck on the road for over four to five hours just to get home in what was dubbed “carmageddon” on Edsa. I was lucky enough to already be home, but I saw it on the news and through social media, photo upon photo of standstill parking lot like traffic and motorists just throwing their hands up in the air in exasperation.
I feel their pain. My daughter makes a pretty far commute to work regular traversing from South to North and back again and I hear from her how bad it can get out there on the roads. People are already packing car emergency bags consisting of food, extra chargers and batteries, and even emergency bathroom instruments just to help them if they get stuck in another three- to four-hour traffic jam.
The sad part is that this has come to be the norm in our country. I remember years ago when the Skyway was first being built, people stomached the four to five traffic jams on South Super Highway under the premise that once the construction was completed traffic would ease up on the road. They kept their word; at least the Skyway helped decongest the flow of cars a little bit. However, how did we find ourselves right back where we started, and in some cases, even worse off than before?
It’s because there is no sustainability when it comes to government projects in our country. One administration enters and is ambitious and tries to solve the problems of the country implementing projects and programs. A little progress is made during their time in power, then the next thing we know, we have a new set of leaders who don’t want to continue things and would rather start from scratch with their own ideas, and lets face it – usually their own suppliers. And we end up going right back to zero.
It’s frustrating, and like I’ve said before, it’s never been as frustrating as it is now in the world of social media. Perhaps the reason people were not as worked up about things before as they are now is because they didn’t realize the gravity of the situation on the national level or they didn’t realize that so many people out there felt the same way. These days all it takes is to look on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and see the collective patience of the population waning thin. Everyone is getting tired of regularly wasting two to three hours of their lives on the road. Not only is it uncomfortable but it is highly counterproductive and it has been monetarily proven that this much time wasted during workdays is adversely affecting the economy with loses of millions upon millions per day.
Ironically, this problem already came to a head before carmageddon happened last Tuesday. To try something new, PNP Highway Patrol Group was put in charge of Edsa in lieu of the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to see if they could do something about the worsening traffic conditions on the country’s main thoroughfare. And to be fair, on the first day it seemed to have a bit of a positive effect on the Edsa traffic situation. The HPG were stricter with road rules when it came to PUVs and also stopped more private vehicles that were not adhering to road rules.
Unfortunately the next day, a couple of hours of rain, washed all the little progress that was made completely away. Tuesday last week was possibly one of the worst days of traffic we have seen in a long time. People would leave Makati at 5:30 or 6 pm and arrive home (at least in the South) almost five hours later. The only difference was that the few hours of rain had already created rivers in places like Quezon City, Chino Roces and Magallanes causing traffic standstill and bottlenecks.
So the question remains, what can we do about it? I believe in order to solve the traffic problem once and for all, we have to really go to the root of the problem and that will unfortunately require far more than just new traffic schemes. I think the first part of the problem is really for the government to look at infrastructure and see what can be changed and improved. This is important because this is the crux of the problem – bad train systems, narrow roads, impassable streets, constant potholes, and bad drainage will always create the same traffic problems we have now regardless of how many new traffic schemes we have and how much re-routing we do.
The most important infrastructure project that should be undertaken is to improve the train system. I know that more people want to commute if it were a viable option. However, they are not willing to wait in a two-hour line to risk life and limb to get on a jam-packed train, which has recently been stopping in the middle of rides due to technical difficulties. We need more train lines (like in Singapore and other Asean countries) and more trains. For a population like ours, what we have now is not even close to enough.
Once infrastructure projects are put into place addressing our train systems, road improvement, proper maintenance, and citywide drainage (lets face it – it rains here constantly), the next step is to reassess the vehicles that are on the road. Buses cause a lot of traffic jams and bus companies should be carefully reviewed. Companies that have missing papers, have pending cases, or badly maintained smoke belching buses should be sanctioned and taken off the road. The same goes for jeepneys and taxicabs.
And finally, we as motorists also have to do our part. In a television interview the HPG director said that private vehicles are just as stubborn if not more so than buses and PUVs. While I still believe buses cause more of the overall congestion, I also agree that private motorists have to contribute discipline and observance of road rules if we truly want to see a change in the traffic situation.
Hopefully, now that our eyes are all fully open we can all do our part and contribute to helping alleviate the traffic on the road. After all, we will all benefit from it in the end.