Carmageddon ahead

Is that a holiday nip in the air? No, it’s just the lower temperature due to a low-pressure area.

We’re not even past the typhoon season yet, but you know how it is – we’re such a Christmas-happy people.

So on the first day of the start of the ’ber months, the city of Manila switched on festive lights strung on all the trees along the northbound lane of Roxas Boulevard.

Shops have started selling Christmas décor and playing Christmas carols. At the Dapitan Arcade in Quezon City, you can actually buy Christmas stuff all year round. With the start of the ’ber months, however, more merchandise is put on display.

Holiday ham cooked Chinese style is also available all year round at Excelente, the ham maker along Carlos Palanca street in Quiapo whose products live up to the brand name. All those curing nitrites, artery-busting layers of fat and sugar-honey glaze… yum yum! If it doesn’t threaten you with death by cholesterol and carcinogens, it’s not sinfully delectable enough.

Carlos Palanca is one of the streets reclaimed for vehicular traffic by Mayor Isko Moreno. He has vowed that he won’t allow vendors to return to Quiapo and Divisoria even for the Christmas holidays. So maybe traffic won’t be too bad in the city this holiday season.

As for the rest of Metro Manila, the guy in charge of traffic management along EDSA, Bong Nebrija of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, is warning the public to prepare for worse traffic during the holidays.

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In case you’ve forgotten, President Duterte had promised to cut travel time from Cubao, Quezon City to Makati to just five minutes within the year. Nebrija was the guy who provided the reality check: it’s simply “mathematically impossible,” he said – a statement for which he says “I heard it from my boss.”

The Philippine National Police, on the other hand, is still working to meet Duterte’s five-minute challenge. Nebrija says without vehicle volume reduction, nothing will work. But the PNP Highway Patrol Group (HPG) thinks traffic flow is a matter of enforcement.

Keep vehicles moving, says HPG spokesman Lt. Col. Ritchie Claraval, and of course there’s no gridlock. No lingering at any spot, especially by buses and other public utility vehicles unloading or waiting for passengers. No road obstructions, no illegal parking that reduces road space, no making illegal turns or hogging lanes to be ahead in making a turn. No commuters waiting for rides right on the street. 

In short, obey traffic rules, and traffic will flow.

The HPG is back on EDSA, armed with guns (they’re regular cops) and traffic citation tickets, to augment MMDA traffic personnel.

Probably because of resentment among some MMDA men, who reportedly refused to work when the HPG was fielded, EDSA has been divided into four zones, with the HPG and MMDA assigned their respective jurisdictions.

Nebrija acknowledges that cops, with their guns, have “an intimidating factor” that unarmed MMDA traffic enforcers lack, and therefore get more “institutional respect” from motorists.

The HPG now has an added edge: it has fielded what Nebrija describes as a “ladies’ strike force.”

What does the “strike force” mean, or do?

Nebrija’s reply: “Girlfriend material… they’re like models.”

Claraval confirmed this as he and Nebrija faced us on “The Chiefs” this week on Cignal TV’s One News. Claraval said the 23 HPG police patrolwomen on motorcycles who have been fielded along EDSA “are called the strike force because they have striking looks.”

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I’m waiting for women’s groups’ reactions to these remarks. Nebrija and Claraval explained that motorists would think twice about breaking traffic rules if there are “striking” women with “pleasing personalities” directing traffic.

“EDSA is stressful enough,” Nebrija told us.

HPG officials had earlier told us that they tested driving from Guadalupe to Cubao on a regular weekday at around 11 a.m., without using sirens and motorcycle riders to part traffic, and made it in six minutes.

Claraval, however, acknowledges that a more realistic sustained travel target for that stretch of EDSA would be 20 to 30 minutes. With enough traffic enforcers to keep vehicles moving, he told us, the 20 to 30 minutes is “possible.”

While Nebrija sees the merits in fielding the ladies’ strike force and the usefulness of better traffic enforcement, he says of EDSA: “The problem is volume… we are managing a parking lot and we are making it a moving parking lot.”

Nebrija is determined to forge ahead with the MMDA’s plan to ban provincial buses from EDSA, and to sustain the bus yellow lane. The MMDA is also considering reviving carpooling, and banning vehicles with only one occupant. The agency is supporting the no-garage, no-car policy as well as the opening of certain roads in private subdivisions. And it will support a coding scheme based on vehicle brands – but only if there’s artificial intelligence to effectively enforce the ban alongside the number coding.

While most people including senators are clueless on what measures exactly would require presidential emergency powers to deal with the traffic mess, Nebrija thinks it would include having a presidential order superseding a temporary restraining order issued by the courts on the provincial bus ban on EDSA. He expects further legal challenges to such a move, but he says that at least the program can be tested and its impact monitored.

Nebrija still thinks the five-minute challenge is impossible. For this to happen on a sustained basis, he says, there must be only 54,000 vehicles traveling at an average speed of 60 kilometers per hour along the 12-km stretch from Aurora Boulevard in Cubao to Ayala Avenue in Makati. The current vehicle volume is over 400,000.

To test if the five-minute drive is possible, Nebrija said he drove in a private car at 60 kph, without escorts or sirens, one recent Sunday in good weather and light traffic, and made it from Guadalupe in Makati to P. Tuazon in seven minutes.

“This is math and math is an exact science,” Nebrija told us. “With the (vehicle) volume that we have right now, that’s impossible.”

So brace yourselves, folks, for the Christmas carmageddon.