Traffic: time to be drastic?

The MMDA chairman said there is nothing much that could be done about our traffic gridlock in the next 15 years. The day after he said that, he went traipsing to Cebu supposedly to help with APEC meetings there but honestly, to campaign for his planned senatorial bid.

“The MMDA has been here for four days. I think I have 60 personnel here including those from road emergency group. For the next three weeks, they’ll be here to manage the traffic,” the chairman told media. The nerve of this guy… he brought essential MMDA traffic personnel with him to Cebu.

Come to think of it, what makes him think those MMDA people can manage traffic better in Cebu when they have failed miserably here in their home base? The chairman is trying to make us believe the big Liberal Party event there was incidental. Puny#ta. Ginagago pa tayo.

Because P-Noy and his officials are able to breeze through our streets with their quiet wang wangs (uniformed police hawi boys in motorcycles shooing motorists away) they do not feel the pain ordinary citizens suffer every day. I wouldn’t take a risk on the patience of our long suffering people. It could all explode one really bad day on EDSA or on the roads leading to the airport.

A sane manager (yes P-Noy, that’s supposed to be you) would realize it is now time for drastic measures. The first thing that ought to be done is to fire chairman Tolentino for failure and also for dereliction of duty. Imagine campaigning in Cebu and elsewhere in the country while we steam in the mess he is neglecting!

But Tolentino is barkada and therefore, untouchable. Besides, he is resigning soon to run for the Senate. That, however, is just the point. He has to be fired now so the electorate will know the guy is useless. The last time I checked, he has a good chance of being elected to the Senate.

The Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) had been toying with a proposal to put up a traffic czar with sufficient powers to deal with all government agencies in relation to traffic management. A traffic council where the private sector is represented could be part of a solution too.

I think we are way past traffic czars and traffic councils even if having them around may be useful, if only to pinpoint responsibility. Right now there is no one responsible… no one whose effigy we can burn in full knowledge he deserves our scorn. Chairman Tolentino has said he is practically useless and so will his successors in the next 15 years.

We need more drastic measures, similar to those that have been implemented in cities like London and Singapore. Yes, some sacrifices and inconveniences are involved for guys like me, but no more than what we are already experiencing now.

Unfortunately, the poor bears the heaviest part of the burden that translates to loss of livelihood. Even if they wake up before the crack of dawn, they are often still unable to make it to their workplaces on time. No, their bosses are not inclined to take the excuse slips issued by MRT3 management to explain why they are late.

Sen. Bam Aquino pointed out lower-income households will spend no less than 20 percent of their monthly household income on transport. He called on the MMDA, the DPWH, Land Transportation Office (LTO) and Land Transportation Franchising and Regulating Board (LTFRB), and the private sector to work together to solve this worsening traffic problem.

Our main difficulty is the absence of a good mass transit system. London and Singapore can at least offer reliable mass transit alternatives to driving cars.

Our only glimmer of hope lies in a study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This is known as the Roadmap for Transport Infrastructure Development. It’s about strategies and solutions to address the negative economic impact of the worsening traffic conditions in Metro Manila.

But the problem with this roadmap is two-fold: one, it is very ambitious in terms of infrastructure building, but dependent on having a competent DOTC for implementation. Secondly, even the JICA expert on top of it says he has rewritten the roadmap countless times over the past 20 years and what it needs now is for our government to implement.

It gives me little comfort to know the roadmap was approved last Sept. 2, 2014 by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Board. That was a year ago. Tell me if you have sensed any movement towards the implementation of the roadmap from DOTC!

The key factor in our worsening traffic condition is the significant population increase in Metro Manila which now stands at 16.5 million. This is all unplanned growth. Metro Manila LGUs and the national government through DOTC simply failed to anticipate and plan for this growth.

As the JICA expert once told a forum, it would have been better if population growth is well distributed in periphery areas where people can live at lower costs, but have easy public transport to the city center where most jobs are. But because we don’t have a good mass transport system, people crowd in unhealthy living conditions within the metro area.

The absence of a reliable mass transport system has made car ownership very attractive here, aggravating the problem. The same thing happened to Los Angeles, the only major US city without a good mass transport system. It is only now they are slowly putting up one, but it doesn’t reach far enough to displace the cars flowing into Los Angeles every day.

The lesson learned is simple: we have to reduce the number of cars on our streets. But for that to happen, we have to put a good mass transit system in place.

San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago have pretty good mass transit systems. They still have their share of traffic gridlocks, but one can just imagine how worse things would have been without their subways and trains.

Closer to home… what Singapore is doing should help us manage the next 15 years while government is building the transport infra we need…

Simply put, the Singaporean government has made it very expensive to own and drive a car. The government realized early on that uncontrolled growth in the number of vehicles will result in traffic jams in land and road scarce Singapore. While we are not exactly land scarce, I am told we have over 90 percent of registered vehicles crowding in four percent of the road space in Metro Manila. We have Singapore’s problem.

The Singaporean government has implemented a range of measures to manage car ownership and usage. These include the Certificate of Entitlement (COE), Vehicle Quota System (VQS), road taxes and Electronic Road Pricing (ERP).

The COE scheme has been one of the most controversial public policies ever implemented but it seems to work. Anyone wishing to buy a car or motorcycle has to bid for a Certificate of Entitlement (COE). Each month, a certain number of COE’s are released for bidding, and if successful, the vehicle entitlement is valid for 10 years from the date of registration of the vehicle.

The scheme aims to peg long-term vehicle population growth at three percent a year. Certain classes of vehicles like public buses, school buses and emergency vehicles are exempted from the scheme.

The COE has become so expensive that it is cost prohibitive to own a car. The government wants people to take public transport. When my son was working in Singapore, he decided to buy a car, a rather humble pre-owned VW Golf that cost him about S$20,000. But the COE on it cost him S$60,000.

Electronic Road Pricing is another way the Singaporean government tackles traffic jams during peak hours. ERP is based on a pay-per-use principle. The motorist pays to drive into traffic heavy business centers.

ERP has been extended to choke-points on other expressways and major roads to alleviate congestion, especially at the dreaded 8:30 a.m. – 9 a.m. timeslot where charges and traffic alike are at their highest.

In Shanghai, vehicles from outside the metro area cannot enter during the business hours. In London, there is a congestion charge on cars entering the central business district during rush hours.

All these entail sacrifices but we are sacrificing much more now in terms of lost time, wasted gasoline and frayed nerves. Our number coding scheme is a joke.

It is time to turn to drastic measures even as we put relentless pressure on DOTC to get the mass transit systems in place sooner than the 15 years they are talking about.

In solving our traffic problem we have to bear in mind we need to move people, not cars. –Boo Chanco (The Philippine Star)

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address isbchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco