Christmas Grinch

A spoiler in this season of cheer is the horrid traffic, and it could get worse as the number coding scheme is lifted starting tomorrow for the holidays. Like Easter Sunday, I guess Christmas must be preceded by a period of suffering before the feasting and celebration.

In my neck of the woods where there’s a shopping mall wherever I turn, traffic was most abominable not over the weekend but last Thursday.

On that day the vehicles were all headed to the malls so I’m sure it was the Christmas shopping rush. It seemed a lot of people feared there would be a crush of shoppers on the last weekend before Christmas so everyone had the same idea: do the final or last-minute shopping on Thursday. The resulting traffic jams must have given people an idea of what hell in a very small place means.

In some instances, mere presence of mind by traffic enforcers can ease gridlocks. At the busy intersection of Macapagal Boulevard and MIA Road, for example, traffic jams have become worse since construction of the overpass from the airport started. Daytime counter-flow for northbound vehicles before the Uniwide bus depot can help.

A prominent property developer remarked that in planned communities, large shopping malls are not built within the inner city. The opposite is done in our country where urban planning is still a relatively new concept: shopping malls are built when the owners believe the population at the projected site is large enough to sustain a mall.

In the US and several other countries, people drive far from the city for outlet shopping and themed entertainment. But in our country, we’ve become used to having a sprawling mall or at least a large supermarket just a short drive (or walk) away from our homes and offices. It’s convenient, it saves fuel, and never mind if the price is heavy traffic. Because of pollution and tropical humidity, air-conditioned malls have also replaced open parks for relaxation. It’s too late to change this setup in the foreseeable future.

In several areas, it may also be too late to build sidewalks or reclaim existing ones, narrow as they are, for pedestrian rather than commercial use. Heavy traffic in cities such as Manila and Parañaque are also caused by pedestrians forced to walk or wait for rides on the street because the sidewalks have been taken over by vendors.  

Except for Los Baños, Laguna – home of the agricultural schools of the University of the Philippines – we don’t have a university town near Metro Manila. All the biggest colleges and universities are in the National Capital Region.

The country’s busiest port is also in the city of Manila. The sheer volume of shipments, compounded by corruption and inefficiency, led to the current port congestion that is pushing up the prices of many goods. Daang matuwid has barely made a dent against corruption at the ports.

It’s true that there are simply too many cars on the road. But motorists aren’t going to ditch their cars unless there is an efficient and reasonably priced mass transportation system.

For some time now, experts and analysts have been tossing around suggestions to deal with the traffic. Several of the suggestions aren’t impossible to implement, considering that similar schemes were done in other countries a long time ago.

*      *      *

A well-traveled elderly man told me last week that inner city mass transportation should be handled by the government. Private transport groups can be limited to operating taxis within the city, with private bus services only in the peripheries and outside Metro Manila. This is the best way, the man said, for buses to strictly follow routes and schedules, arriving and departing on time at each stop. Drivers, whose daily pay will no longer depend on how many passengers they can cram into their bus, can afford to strictly follow schedules.

This is the setup in several major cities abroad. The efficient mass transport systems within city centers – a network of buses, electric trams and subways – also boost tourism.

On second thought, this may not be such a good idea, considering the performance of the state-run Metro Rail and Light Rail Transit systems. But perhaps the next president and a new team at the Department of Transportation and Communications can do a better job.

The jeepney truly has to be phased out. I know we have a sentimental attachment to the clunky, polluting contraption with its gaudy body paint and ear-splitting music, but it’s an inefficient means of mass transport that at best can be relegated to secondary routes, if we think it’s such a valuable cultural icon.

If jeepneys are retained, the current ones must start giving way to the new electric-powered version with larger passenger capacity. The government can provide incentives for the phase-out of the old version for the e-jeepney.

Public Works and Highways Secretary Rogelio Singson believes a subway in Metro Manila is viable. I told him Manila’s Lagusnilad or underpass across city hall becomes a swimming pool even after a brief heavy downpour, and the country sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but he was undaunted. Japan is also regularly visited by powerful earthquakes and even tsunamis, he argued, but it’s crisscrossed with subways and high-speed train services.

The next administration (the current transport team is hopeless) must seriously develop a railway system for cargo transport to reduce the number of truck haulers going to and from the Port of Manila.

All these measures require long-term planning and a degree of political will, both of which are lacking in the typical elective official.

No politician has the nerve even to phase out the jeepney – a crucial step in modernizing the mass transport system.

When an official worries about getting elected every three years, there is no room for long-term planning. A single-term president is supposed to be relieved of this burden. But being a member of a political party, and having his own interests to protect upon his retirement, President Aquino also wants a successor of his own choosing. If he wants endorsement power in 2016, P-Noy may be reluctant to alienate the masses.

P-Noy and all his Cabinet members hold office in Metro Manila. To decongest the city, there are proposals to build a government center outside the NCR, like Myanmar’s Naypyidaw and Brasilia in Brazil, but I doubt if this will materialize in my lifetime.

Other measures, however, need not take too long to implement. The next generations can be spared from the aggravation of traffic and lousy mass transportation.They can enjoy a less stressful Christmas.