It seems that all is not quiet in the traffic management front.
Congress is not only lukewarm to the proposed emergency powers for the President to solve the worsening traffic gridlock in Metro Manila. In fact, some of its members are calling for the replacement of Secretary of Transportation Art Tugade for his failure to come up with solutions to the traffic problem. He is being criticized for relying too much on the emergency powers when there are clearly some steps that could be taken to alleviate the problem even without the grant of emergency powers.
This is bringing back the debate to where it started: whether it is in fact even necessary to grant emergency powers simply to solve the traffic mess. The so-called emergency powers is focused on granting the President authority to short cut the bidding process for transport infrastructure projects like roads, overpasses and rail road projects. The Metro Manila Development Authority under OIC Emerson Orbos and the Philippine National Police Highway Patrol Group point, however, to the formation of the Inter Agency on Traffic composed of four government agencies. Critics say that these agencies are simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem that they have been driven to paralysis.
Even President Duterte, according to someone close to him, took one hard look at the traffic problem and said six years would not be enough. That seems to be the reason why he has not said very much about the problem. The problem is indeed daunting—but doing nothing is even worse. What to do and where to start appears to be the problem of our traffic managers.
Much is being concentrated on enforcement and for Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, the adding of double-deck buses which will simply add to the many city buses already plying the streets of the Metro Area. It is also sad that the traffic battle which has now been centered on Edsa is not being won at all.
Do our traffic managers really believe that by decongesting Edsa and improving travel time along the road that everybody will say that the traffic in the metro area has improved? If our traffic managers cannot even solve the traffic along a 24-kilometer stretch of road, how can the public really expect them to solve the Metro Manila traffic problem?
A drive along Edsa from end to end is a showcase of why the government cannot seem to solve the traffic gridlock. The chaos is so plain to see. Tricycles counter flowing, jeepneys and taxis using the roads as terminals, buses blocking each other to compete for passengers and sidewalk vendors using portions of the road to hawk their goods. Edsa is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in our traffic management.
As I have written in the past, we are the only country in the world that put fences on our roads. The reason for this is driver discipline and the inability of government to enforce traffic laws. And so long as this continues, there is really no way to improve the efficiency on how we use our roads. Since MMDA is the local authority mandated to solve the traffic in the Metro area, it should try to hire competent traffic engineers and planners to assist the agency. I know they will say again that they know what they are doing and that they are consulting and rely on foreign groups like the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, but MMDA uses the data coming from JICA to rationalize their failures.
What is needed in the Metro Area is what to do now. MMDA needs traffic signaling experts, traffic sign experts and engineers that can undertake small engineering projects that could have significant impacts on traffic. MMDA also needs people that can do traffic surveys like origin and destination surveys as a basis to assign bus and jeepney routes. When the DOTC was originally organized in 1979, then-Minister Jose Dans banned jeepneys and tricycles along Edsa. The number of bus companies plying the streets of Metro Manila was also reduced to 10 which included the Love Bus—if people still remember those days.
When President Cory Aquino took over, all these things were thrown out and anybody who can buy a bus can operate a bus line. Instead of public transport improving, it started to deteriorate to what we see in Edsa today.
It really is disappointing to see that instead of marching towards modernity which we all aspire for, we are moving backwards. We cannot seem to transcend the morass of ineptitude so that we can also boast to the world that we have arrived. We cannot even ban the tricycles and the pedicabs along Edsa together with the persistent sidewalk market in Balintawak that are not only an eye sore but also impede the efficient flow of traffic along the road.
So why is it that the government cannot get rid of those sidewalk vendors in Balintawak? Is it because of the kawawa naman sila mentality so that we have tolerate them because they are poor? Then we really cannot solve our traffic problems and it is really a hopeless case.
Many years ago, the city of Jakarta in one swoop prohibited tricycles along its streets. Anyone caught, would have his unit thrown to the sea. The method was admittedly draconian but there are no more tricycles on the streets of Jakarta today. People will also have to realize that not only should the tricycles be banned from Metro Manila streets. The jeepney must now also be gradually phased out.