Macroscoping the Traffic Problem

Nobody has a monopoly of wisdom on the traffic problem of Metro Manila. Anyone who claims that he can solve the problem is most likely out of his mind, a drunk, a wannabe Tuesday morning quarterback, or a re-electionist politician.

It’s good enough that every Juan has a 10 cents’ worth of opinion on the problem. It goes to show that people acknowledge and own this problem, understand a bit of the problem and have some ideas on the solution it entails.

Knee-jerk Reactions and Band-aid Solutions

Just as traffic prevents us from getting to where we want to go at the time we need to be there, the current efforts to solve the problem will not get us anywhere near the end of the problem. Not in the near future. The problem will get worse before it gets better. This is for as long as we lose sight of the forest for the trees.  The current efforts focus on the micro side of the issue, that is, day-to-day traffic management, but miss the big picture. What we get are only knee-jerk reactions and band-aid solutions.  This is a classic case of attempting to solve a problem that begs a long term solution with short-term fixes.

Too Much Vehicles and Not Enough Roads

At the risk of being accused of trivializing the issue, we have to restate that our traffic woes are essentially brought about by “too much vehicles and not enough roads”. This brings us to a point that a Grade 4 student can easily understand. Our options are: control the trips of vehicles or build more roads and/or mass transport systems.

Reduce Vehicles or Build Mass Transport Systems

Controlling the trips of vehicles or reducing vehicles plying the streets through number coding and truck ban have been tried in a variety of forms but hardly improved the situation. Rather than solve the problem, this approach creates more problems. 

Number coding merely increased car sales as more people bought a second car that they can use on days they cannot use their first car and on other days (not covered by its own number coding) as well. Thus, the number coding system actually multiplied the volume of vehicles on the roads and did not improve traffic at all.

On the other hand, the truck ban is equally an ill-conceived solution. Banning from the streets trucks that haul goods in and out of the country is counter-productive and adversely impacts the economy. Instead of giving priority to the sectors that drive up economic growth, their right and freedom to use the roads, built from taxes we all pay, are being restricted congesting the ports and delaying the movement of cargoes (including domestic goods and exports and imports). As if adding insult to injury, the current proposal is to allow trucks in the streets during unholy hours of the day only (e.g. 12MN to 4AM). Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot?

That the local governments have joined the fray did not help at all as it opened the floodgates of parochial concerns side by side with national interests.  The LGUs are understood to be beholden to adopt populist policies that cater to the convenience of their constituents which favor the reduction of the volume of vehicles plying their turf.  Now, politicians have further muddled the situation.  

Who Should be Blamed for the Traffic Mess

By the way, who are most responsible for clogging the roads?  A debate on this question at the wrong place can spark a riot. Here’s an overview of what’s going on.

Private vehicles, which is a beneficiary of the truck ban, consist the highest number of road users (about 240,000 vehicles on a given day in EDSA) carrying mostly a single person. Private vehicles are now the target of a new proposal to ban them in EDSA and herd them to the side streets from 6-9AM. Another variant of band-aid solutions that will not really work.

People do not drive to go somewhere because they have a car but because they have no alternative. Driving own car is very heavy on the pocketbook at today’s gas prices and snail-paced traffic. If there’s an adequate and reliable mass transport system, car owners would rather keep their cars in the garage or in a park-and-ride facility and take the train or a bus. As it is right now, we do not see that happening because the lines of commuters waiting for a ride in MRT major stations during rush hours are more than a kilometer long single file.

 

Public utility buses take the blame for causing the worst accidents and traffic log jams. There are about 14,000 buses only in EDSA. The problem with buses is that they stop at will to pick up and unload passengers in any part of the road: left, right or even center.  When they do pull over at bus stops, they hug the space for as long as they want, rear protruding out, stalling and blocking other buses to wait for passengers. They vie for less passengers now, hence, the competition among buses has become so stiff and cut-throat, thanks also to the boundary system that still persists to this day. When buses got involved in an accident, the enormous gridlock could affect the whole metropolis. Although the problems they cause may be real, they cannot be solved by banning buses from the roads. The players can all use discipline here: operators, drivers, traffic enforcers, passengers.

The jeepney remains as a picturesque icon of the Filipino culture and ingenuity. As public utility vehicles, however, jeepneys have become more of a nuisance and have been blamed for the traffic woes on the roads when driven by undisciplined drivers. Sturdy as they are, jeepneys swerve and snake in all lanes of the roads to compete for passengers and oftentimes cause accidents and traffic gridlocks. Jeepney drivers are some of the most reckless drivers on the road because they can do that and get away with it. The lax enforcement of traffic regulations can be the real culprit here. Filipino drivers drive properly in places where traffic enforcement is known to be strict.        

The lumbering trucks/haulers which carry cargoes to and from the ports are the favorite whipping boys and escape goats on traffic problems. Maybe because they are big and highly visible and occupy more road space and move slower. It’s actually a catch 22 situation, they are damned when they move slow but moving fast they can cause accidents. So many incidents involving container van falling off their trailer have been recorded. Whenever a hauler gets into an accident or suffer breakdown, traffic would stand still for hours on end throughout the metropolis.

The other culprits: tricycles, pedicabs, motorcycles, kuligligs, and other Filipino inventions, are like mosquitoes in your bedroom. They are everywhere and you cannot drive them out: in highways, main roads, major city streets, or where they should not be, posing risks for accident and causing traffic slowdown. They do frustrating things with impunity such as, going counter flow, hugging the speed lanes, passing at your blind side, particularly when traffic is heavy. The scenario portrays the kind of anarchy and lawlessness obtaining in our streets.

Recycled Solutions

The authorities have tried so many strategies, including color coding, number coding, truck ban, elimination of rotundas, restoration of rotundas through U-turn slots, one-way traffic routes, alternating push-pull traffic flow, river transport, etc. The current efforts are not new but just variants of previously tried and failed attempts to solve the problem.

Real Solutions

No matter how valiant the current efforts are, they are bound to fail because the real solutions are infrastructure-based and are not being given priority: efficient and reliable mass transport system, new circumferential and by-pass roads, skyways, subways, no-nonsense road maintenance, waterways and drainage cleanup, flood prevention, and (pardon me for including this) outward economic development policies which can encourage reverse migration to the provinces.

To begin with, an adequate and reliable mass transport system can substantially ease traffic flow even before new roads are built. The dream is for the time to come when private motorists would voluntarily decide to take the train instead of using their cars because it would be more convenient, faster and reliable, not to mention the big gas money they would save.

  

Back to Square One

Building more infrastructures has been in the government’s agenda but has progressed very poorly beyond the lip service of government leaders. Hence, the solution could not catch up with the problem. The problem has already morphed to a bigger monster, when the solution arrives. The desired reliable mass transport system (e.g. light rail train) adequate to service the current volume of commuters as well as encourage people driving their car to work, school and elsewhere to take the train instead has remained a wistful dream. Not only has the traffic problem gotten worse faster than the infrastructures could be built, the existing light rail trains have become unreliable due to maintenance neglect. And then we hear that this is so because they have become obsolete and need to be totally replaced. What does that make of our situation? Back to square one!                                                                        
     

The Root of the Problem

The root of the traffic problem is presidential. Under our system, there is no blueprint and continuity for long term government projects, particularly on infrastructure development, that an incoming president must implement when he takes over. Unlike in the parliamentary system of government where bureaucracy continues to function as leaders come and go, our system is largely dependent on the agenda of the sitting president. Under the current administration, infrastructures sprung to a full stop when the president assumed office. Even as the six-year term of a president is not enough to totally bridge the gap in infrastructures, the current president did not hit the ground running when the starting gun sounded. His first couple of years were devoted to hedging, blaming the past and discontinuing projects already in the pipeline. Lesson learned is that cramming on infrastructures towards the end of the administration is really bad timing as a president’s popularity traditionally plummets near the end of his term. Needless to mention that long term projects cannot be completed within two years. Not only that. He is going to be busy not only in warding off attempts to show him as a lame duck but also in playing his part in the political efforts to ensure that his candidate succeeds him. Or to find a way to extend his term.