Curbing mobility

You get a fifth of vehicles off the streets so naturally traffic flows faster. With so many public works projects and road diggings going on all over Metro Manila, however, the impact of the “no-window” coding scheme is nothing spectacular. Still, even a minor improvement is welcome.

The no-window scheme now in effect in Metro Manila will work during the Christmas rush. But if it is made permanent, it will have one sure consequence: vehicle sales will surge, even if vehicle excise taxes are raised.

There’s one reason people refuse to take public transportation in Metro Manila: mass transport facilities are hopelessly inadequate. As long as this problem is not addressed, you can impose all types of vehicle reduction schemes, but people will still invest substantial amounts in ensuring their mobility.

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I am willing to take mass transportation regularly, but my part of Metro Manila is not reached by the light railway services. And even if they do, there’s no certainty that I can reach the office daily at the rate the light trains keep breaking down.

The Pasig River does not run through my part of town. Otherwise I’d be willing to take the river ferry operated by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority – I’ve tried it and found it surprisingly efficient and pleasant. This is one mode of mass transportation that must be boosted.

From my part of town to the office, in regular traffic, taking an Uber taxi daily will cost an average middle-income worker possibly half a month’s salary.

There are air-conditioned buses that I’ve taken a few times from a nearby shopping mall. My hour-long drive always turned into a two-hour commute in light traffic because the bus would stop to pick up and wait for every potential passenger, after which I had to take a jeepney ride that trundled along to the Port Area for about half an hour, again for the same reason.

You can finish a lot of work on a laptop during a two-hour commute, but computers and smart phones are lightning rods for muggers. I personally know college students who have suffered from such attacks.

There’s a commuter train that I can take after riding a tricycle and then a jeepney and walking about 15 minutes to the station. At all hours of the day, passengers on the slow, rickety train are packed like sardines.

I could move back to the city of Manila where I was born and bred, to cut the daily travel time to the office. But if all of us who fled the urban blight of what constitutes Metro Manila’s inner city did the same thing, that would beat the idea of decongesting megacities. Also, the awful pollution in Manila is bad for the health. Where I live there are still trees that make the air breathable, and the neighborhood isn’t a hotbed of Oplan Tokhang.

Besides, the travel time won’t be cut all that much, because of the infernal traffic in Manila. Just try driving around the Sta. Cruz, Quiapo and University Belt districts from Monday to Saturday.

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Now the House of Representatives wants to raise excise taxes on cars, so that people will have to fork out about P400,000 more for a P1.2-million vehicle.

For the reasons already mentioned, the tax won’t stop people from buying more cars. It may encourage more people to buy motorcycles, which means greater pollution. Definitely it will be an additional burden, mostly on the middle class, and not on the geniuses in Congress who can afford to keep a dozen luxury cars in their palatial homes.

Those who will be forced to spend six hours commuting to earn a living because they have been deprived of the use of their lone car for a single day should remember the sponsors of this tax scheme. One day an opportunity may arise for suffering folks to get even instead of getting mad.

The six hours is no exaggeration. There have been numerous TV interviews and news features about the daily travails of commuters in Metro Manila.

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With or without emergency powers, President Duterte can use his immense popularity to make people swallow bitter pills and at least lay the groundwork for decongesting Metro Manila.

The jeepneys will have to be phased out, perhaps relegated to secondary streets or outside Metro Manila, and replaced with double-deck conveyances that follow designated stops at designated times. This means making public transport operators strictly abide by a ban on the boundary system, under which a driver’s daily take-home pay depends on how many passengers he picks up.

This is the biggest reason why drivers turn roads into virtual terminals and stop wherever they please, even in the middle of the street, to pick up a single passenger.

Schools and major hospitals must be encouraged, through incentives such as tax breaks and one-stop shop express business processing (good luck on that) to set up satellites in the peripheries of Metro Manila and its neighboring provinces.

At this point we can’t afford to create a new capital like Brasilia or Myanmar’s Naypyidaw or move the main offices of national government agencies outside Metro Manila. But the agencies can set up more satellite offices and small outlets in shopping malls for delivering basic documents such as birth certificates, police and NBI clearances, driver’s licenses and passports.

For pension verification purposes, for example, why do the elderly have to travel all the way to Manila? There are computers that can show them in real time, very much alive and eligible to continue receiving their money.

Authorities have to provide the needed manpower, facilities and other requirements to encourage those engaged in business and logistics to use other ports particularly Batangas and decongest the Port of Manila.

Du30 can invest political capital and make local government executives persuade homeowners’ associations to open a few roads in gated subdivisions to public traffic for free. Referendums can be conducted by local government units among homeowners to find out if they want to turn over their subdivisions to the LGU, which can then directly handle the delivery of basic services such as security and road maintenance. Real estate prices rise dramatically along roads that are opened to the public so I think there are people who will go along with the idea, in the absence of amendments to housing and land use laws.

Finally, we need more trains, double-deck buses, even a subway. The mark of a sustainable city is when even high public officials take the bus or train to work. Daily, willingly.