The worsening traffic problem in Metro Manila and other major cities is fast becoming unbearable. This was according to American Chamber of Commerce president John Forbes who said foreign businessmen lament living and doing business in the Philippines.
“With so many vehicles being put on the road, traffic has become unbearable and living in urban areas uninhabitable,” said Forbes who reiterated his prediction two years ago. He noted it is not only Metro Manila where traffic has morphed into a monstrous gridlock. Cities like Baguio and Cebu are the same.
I could not agree more with Forbes’ dire outlook. Buhay Party-list Rep. Lito Atienza, who once asked about the problem, had suggested Metro Manila mayors for a start should hold an emergency meeting on traffic management.
“Solving the traffic problem may be impossible, but easing it is doable,” said Atienza who served for three terms as mayor of Manila. He said Metro Manila mayors should work together as traffic flow is interlinked with each of their cities. Vehicles from Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Pasay and Makati are a cross current of traffic flow that gets snagged particularly during rush hours.
Atienza said motor vehicles allowed on Edsa should be limited to Point-to-Point buses and private cars should have high occupancy or least two persons—driver and passenger. This restriction can be lifted on weekends when motor vehicle traffic is lighter because workers and student commuters presumably are not on the road.
In cities, all this is happening because work and business are concentrated in the metropolis and urban areas.
Although already employed here, Filipinos still seek jobs overseas. This is because so much time is spent on the road traveling to work. Man-hours lost is the lament of business establishments and consequently of foreign investors whose priority is productivity.
An alternative could be the dispersal of industries and government offices outside of Metro Manila. There is too much concentration of business offices in the urban areas. Clark in Pampanga, Sta. Rosa or Binan in Laguna could host government offices employing residents in these towns who would not have to commute.
Aside from the government’s plan to build more roads and elevated expressways, the total overhaul of the mass rail transport system is a must if traffic is going to be lessened. Cities like New York, London and nearby Hong Kong and Singapore have shown that interlinked underground commuter railway and surface buses make their cities livable.
At our group’s regular morning coffee gathering, an elderly statesman would often ask: “What’s happening to our country?” He, of course, knows the answer more than us but he wants to hear what the others think.
After getting feedback from some of us, he would then give us his more prescient insight. We then have an exchange of views and concerns.
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I cannot help but feel perturbed about certain developments in the local and international scene.
Foremost of these concerns is China’s continued militarization of the man-made islands in the Spratlys and the Paracels. Aside from posing a direct threat to us in the West Philippine Sea, freedom of navigation for international cargo vessels using vital South China Sea lanes is impeded. It does not help that our soft and trusting foreign policy vis-à-vis China is encouraging Beijing to flex its military muscle even more to advance its expansionist agenda in the region.
My second concern is that the rest of our citizens are ambivalent in raising their collective voices against the indecent plan in the House Representatives to convene itself into a constituent assembly to revise the 1987 Constitution. This is brazen and shameful and can only result in a Charter change that benefits the congressmen to stay in power perpetually.
The people have a right to participate in drafting a new charter through a Constitutional convention of elected delegates who will write the basic law of the land but the congressmen want to arrogate this duty unto themselves.
Challenges to the posts of the Supreme Court Chief Justice and the Ombudsman add to the uncertainty in our society’s legal foundation. Whatever the outcome of the impeachment proceeding against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, we hope our legal institutions will emerge even stronger.
