But how do we know traffic is that bad?

That there is a traffic problem in the city is a foregone conclusion. The extended frustration vented in social media nowadays is proof enough - some people are even contemplating to mount a revolution.  Just a figure of speech, we all know that starting one is a capital offense.  But it seems traffic is so important that it is even included as an issue in the presidential elections, especially that in Metro Manila.

How come our candidates are asked how they would solve the congestion in Metro Manila, and not those in Cebu and other Philippine cities, is a good question, and the easy answer to that is easy - the National Government lives there, and the people who we ask the questions, the national media, are all there.  So much for regional equality, that is another foregone conclusion.  Just saying, that's not the topic here; traffic is.

Let's go back to those time (that was not too long ago, was it?) when traffic in Cebu was "a breeze" (or so we think).  We often boast that we were "more livable."  But that was an apparition, induced by comparisons.  Anybody from Tagbilaran or Dumaguete would tell you that traffic in Cebu is now a headache.  And anybody from any other town out there would complain that Tagbilaran and Dumaguete were a "choke."  The ordinary notion of traffic, therefore, is one of comparison, between big and small cities, or between the capital and the lesser ones.

The other truism is the fact that how we see traffic - especially its getting from good to bad, or bad to worse - occurs over time.  If it took 20 minutes from Capitol to Talamban before, and a few years after, it became 30 minutes, we say traffic is getting bad.  A few years after, travel time between the same two places becomes one hour, and we say it has gone worse.  Wait till it becomes two hours.  Then we say 30 minutes was not bad after all!  That's why, while we whine about traffic in Cebu and Manila, all the other cities do too, actually, in their own sense, because they compare to themselves in the past. Ask your friends in Davao, Ilo-Ilo, and Cagayan de Oro.

In order to see the true situation of our traffic congestion in a way that we can compare them with the other cities (and with the rest of the world for that matter), we need to be able to "measure" it. Now this might be discarded as a waste of time by those who are now standing still or "inching" their way (literally) at the Mactan bridges, but this is very important to those who are supposed to solve the gridlock. Much more so when one lane out of the six connecting the islands get "impassable" sometime next month.  They need to be able to provide solutions and alternative that will address the congestion.  Meaning, decrease it.

When we "decrease" something, we mean we lower a measurement down from a former high level to a lower one.  It's not just a matter of perception, "mata-mata," gut feel, hope, or faith.  Sure there will always be a certain level of uncertainty, but these are minimized both by the knowledge of how the system works, and by the availability of data, especially of the "before and after" kind.  Traffic is a physical phenomenon and has physical measurements.

The more important measurement, in the present Metro Cebu and the Mactan bridges traffic paradigm is the level of congestion.

What is the actual situation now, in each part of the city and in each hour of the day?  The fact that traffic flow is not constant means that solutions are different by place and time. Solutions exist, but, each will have varying degrees of "decreasing" congestion.  Which one do we do.  Or do first? The one which decreases congestion the most, of course!  But how do we know that if we don't even know the measure of congestion in the first place? (to be continued)