Makati will be the first city to have its own subway. Not because it’s the country’s richest; a private group will undertake construction. It’s because the younger leadership plans it so. Running for mayor in 2016, Abby Binay spoke of digitalizing the financial district and the outlying residential quarters. That includes a mass rapid transport, which she worked on upon election. A Hong Kong MTR-type commuter rail will decongest Makati’s notorious traffic, cleanse it of smog and noise, and modernize city life.
Currently at Swiss Challenge stage is a proposed 10-kilometer dual rail with ten stops. From the business center and homes, the subway is to connect to the metropolitan MRT-3, a planned North-South subway, and the Pasig River ferry. Financing the $3.7 billion is listed IRC Properties with foreign rail and construction partners. City Hall’s contribution to the Public-Private Partnership would be its present land holdings, as underground stations. Makati can use city funds for other services.
Six-coach trains of 1,200 riders would move up to 700,000 by Mayor Abby’s envisioned “Makati 2025: Fast-Tracking Progress.” Nearly 270,000 cars will be taken off the streets. No longer would “jeep-setters” have to take several rides from one Makati zone to another. About 2.3 million tons less greenhouse gas would be emitted per year. Construction, operation, and support services would generate 6,000 jobs. Land values can increase to 20 percent. About $600 million a year would be added to Philippine GDP, Japan’s aid agency says. Makati’s day population of 4.5 million and night residents of less than a million would have more comfortably mobile lives.
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The airlines worsened last weekend’s chaos, grumbled the Manila International Airport boss. They didn’t coordinate with him their recovery flights for stranded passengers. To that, airline reps quickly retorted. They wouldn’t have had to add flights to begin with had he removed fast enough the wayward Boeing-737 from the grassy runway side. But it was the responsibility of the jumbo’s owner Xiamen Airlines to tow away its busted plane. He only did it himself because it could have taken longer. To that, airport users had a big question. Who let the Chinese airline into Manila in the first place as frequent special charter, which needs explaining. Because of the prolonged search for a solution – a crane big enough to lift the beast from the mud to the asphalt – more problems piled up. So if anyone is to blame for the 36-hour standstill at the country’s supposed premiere gateway, it’s the MIA general manager. He may have done his best, but it just wasn’t good enough.
Since a decade ago MIA emergency action plans already had been manualized. It includes various scenarios, from crashes to terror attacks, fires to earthquakes. Who’s to do what, where, when, and how are detailed. Everyone has but to commit his role to memory. Part of that process is constant practice. So the GM must be asked: when was the last time MIA held an emergency drill? Wasn’t it two long years ago, and only a minor one?
That MIA lacked exercises became obvious right after the Xiamen aircraft skidded off the rain-soaked runway. Fire trucks arrived fast enough. But evacuators were late. Passengers, instead of being led away from the plane in case of a blaze from half-full fuel tanks, were found sheltering under the wings from the downpour. That foreboded the bedlam that followed.
More questions from air experts: where was the GM’s Assistant General Manager for Security and Emergency Services, or AGMSES? That guy is the peacetime drill sergeant and crisis officer-in-charge. Why did he not have the equipment, like pneumatic lifts, for a Category-10 facility, as required by the International Civil Aviation Organization? Where was the Assistant General Manager for Operations, or AGMO? Last time he was in the news was because of discharged emergency batteries when MIA lost electricity for 12 crucial hours in Apr. 2016. Aren’t the GM and the two assistants too old – past retirement age – for their young men’s jobs? Sprightly, tech-savvy engineers must take over from the dinosaurs.
Tens of thousands of air travelers ended up victims. Most pitiful were outbound Filipino seamen who missed boarding their foreign work ships at destination cities. They now have to rebook weeks late to catch those vessels at other ports. Meantime, no work, no pay. As distressed are workers to the Middle East who, unable to report on the specified date, likely suffered expired visas. Plus those who missed business or medical appointments, weddings, burials, or visits to terminally-ill relatives. Many are still trying to rebook tickets or get refunds.
Disaster dry runs would have ferreted out potential snags. Airlines could have harmonized their S-O-S procedures with MIA’s. Related agencies like the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and the Civil Aeronautics Board could have crafted apt policies and rules. Backup Clark Airport in Pampanga would have found out where it lags.
As for the Dept. of Transport brass, they must explain why all these years they haven’t made up their minds. Will they pave additional runways at MIA, or erect a new airport either in Bulacan or Sangley-Cavite, and expand old ones at Clark and Subic bases?
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Odd for the presidential spokesman, as concurrent adviser on human rights and law professor, to say that VP Leni Robredo and the city council must disprove President Duterte’s claim of Naga being a “hotbed of shabu.” He says it’s not accuser Duterte’s duty to show proof. That’s sinking to the level of the senator they hate so much – the one who in every legislative inquiry shouts, “You’re guilty, prove to me you’re not.”
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