A transportation, not a traffic crisis

Last week was good for someone like me, who is both an academic and practitioner in the field of governance. It was a week of learning from experiences all over the world in the area of urban development and transportation. This was because of three visitors from the United States of America—Benjamin de la Peña and Amira Ibrahim of Rockefeller Foundation (a US based philanthropic organization that supports work that expands opportunity and strengthens resilience to social, economic, health and environmental challenges) and Susan Zielenski, the Managing Director of SMART (Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation), a project of the Transportation Research Institute and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in the University of Michigan. They were here as partners of the Ateneo School of Government which is undertaking a study on transportation and mobility in Metro Manila.

We are doing this study in collaboration with the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority under the leadership of Chairman Francis Tolentino. In doing his job, as seen in his political will to implement anti-smoking policies, protect the skyline of our city from excessive billboards and now in setting aside lanes exclusively for motorcycles to ensure safety, Chairman Tolentino has proven to be an innovative and dynamic leader. We will also be working with local government leaders like Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista who understands what is at stake in transportation and stayed the whole day with the ASoG team and other transportation stakeholders in an inception workshop on the project held also last week.

In a public lecture sponsored by ASoG and Ayala Land and in many conversations, including during the inception workshop, our visitors shared with us their insights about big (the so-called mega) cities—their problems as well as the potential solutions— and specifically how to deal with transportation challenges. From de la Peña, a Filipino and city planner who has become very influential in my own thinking of how cities should be managed, we heard that increasing urbanization is actually good for development, that decongesting cities is not necessarily desirable, and above all that the problems of cities are solvable. Zielenski shared with us the concept of “new mobility” and how many cities are solving transportation challenges with this new approach of connecting the dots, bringing diverse innovations in transportation together in ways that actually work better for users than providing solely and predominantly for the single occupancy vehicle.

For a “road warrior” like me, who spends 3-4 hours a day navigating the streets of Metro Manila to get to meetings and events I am expected to attend, the most important lesson from last week is the necessity of reframing our challenge in Metro Manila, from seeing it as essentially a traffic crisis to understanding that what we face is a transportation and mobility challenge. If we reduce our problem to one of traffic, then the solution would be to build more roads—the default solution. But the truth is that even the most modest population growth will quickly eat up the increased road capacity. New roads, such as the proposed new Edsa skyway, will eventually increase pollution and traffic.

Most importantly, new roads are not the answer for Metro Manila because they do not address the roots of the problem: the lack of an effective, comprehensive, and flexible transportation network that Metro Manilans find a viable alternative to regularly using private vehicles. Such a network should offer a variety of options, from mass transit like buses and light rail trains, to feeder transit like jeepneys, tricycles, and padyaks, and even personal transport like bicycles, and encourage pedestrian traffic. One refrain I learned from last week’s conversations with our visitors: If we care about the people, count them (instead of obsessing about vehicles).

In Metro Manila, transportation options do exist—buses and trains, trikes and jeeps—but they exist while using such resources as gasoline, routes, and time inefficiently, with low levels of convenience due to unpredictable stops, and aggressive driving that amplifies road congestion. The other options, especially bicycle lanes, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, and environmentally friendly “green” transport, have yet to be given sufficient space by local government policy, or sufficient momentum by private investment or personal habit. Because of this, we turn to private vehicles instead as the preferred solution—only to amplify the problem, because buses obviously transport more people than cars for the same amount of road space or gasoline consumed.

Yet Manila buses, which serve as the primary, long-range option for commuters, offer a telling example of our megacity’s challenges. Our metro area is unique in the world in that its bus transportation system is wholly privatized, with ninety-two companies servicing Metro Manila alone, fielding over 3,700 buses. Even the MMDA considers this an oversupply of buses, but this is compounded by a commission-based “boundary system” of paying drivers and conductors, that encourages long wait times at stops, and competition among buses, to pack them as full as possible and maximize their take-home pay.

What is needed is sustainable mobility: a transportation network and public transit system that, through its flexibility, efficiency, and ease of access and use, allows any member of society to “to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade, and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological values, today or in the future,” as defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It’s not just mass transit, but “personal mobility”, where the individual commuter can get from home to work (and back again), or anywhere in the city, in a fair amount of time, almost door-to-door, using many interconnected options with a minimum of hassle. In developing such a network, an inclusive approach must be followed, paying attention especially to the needs of the poor who depend on transportation for work and to go to their jobs.

This requires an overhaul of Metro Manila’s transportation system. The new mobility approach must animate urban development planning, prioritizing smart use of public transport systems, and bike and foot traffic lanes. We might also have to rethink planned Light Rail Transit projects that might be too expensive for government and commuters to pay for, and especially when Bus Rapid Transit options are an option. In this regard, the national government is crucial. I believe that Secretary Manuel Roxas II, who has assembled a superb leadership team in the Department on Transportation and Communications, would be able to make the hard and right decisions on these issues.

There must be no sacred cow in solving Metro Manila’s transportation crisis. And the first that must be “slain” is the belief that we have a traffic problem when what we face is better understood as a transportation and mobility challenge. In succeeding columns, I will identify other transportation problems and issues. I will, however, also propose solutions. After all, as I learned from my visitors last week, the experience of the great cities of the world (London, New York and to these I will add Beijing where I am writing this column) teaches us that there is light at the end of the tunnel for big city problems. But we must work hard, be patient and, yes, set aside old paradigms. –Dean Tony La Vina, Manila Standard Today

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