Partido Reporma chairman and standard-bearer Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson is doing away with building more road networks in Metro Manila, saying the best way to improve its traffic situation is to let more people move away from the cities and go back to the provinces.
In his conversation with radio hosts Ted Failon and DJ Chacha over Radyo Singko on Wednesday, Lacson said his plans to decongest the National Capital Region (NCR) are tied to his Budget Reform Advocacy for Village Empowerment (BRAVE) policy agenda.
BRAVE has been one of the flagship legislative proposals of Lacson, which aims to infuse better public funding for community development projects to be facilitated by the local government units (LGU) themselves down to the barangay level.
“Fixing the traffic situation is attached to village empowerment. Because when you disburse the resources of the government and it results in development, livelihood for the people in distant places, they will naturally move to those areas,” he said.
Lacson indicated he is not enthusiastic about adding more infrastructure projects for Metro Manila since it already has too many layers of skyways serving motorists across different cities to nearby Luzon provinces.
“It is too easy to say we will decongest traffic through infrastructure, but we are running out of space. We already have so many layers of elevated highways. The interconnector is already a great help,” he said, referring to the NLEX-SLEX connector road project of the Department of Public Works and Highways.
Through BRAVE, Lacson explained, Filipinos would have more options to build a better life anywhere in the Philippines, making their frequent complaints about traffic a thing of the past already, as signs of progress could be achieved not only in big cities but also in the provinces.
This budget-reform oriented measure seeks to decentralize public funds on various development and social services projects from the national government to the LGUs with the end goal of spending taxpayers’ money judiciously.