Judging from the way the media is treating the looming turnover of government from the outgoing Aquino administration to the incoming Duterte administration, it would seem that President Aquino is turning over a government in crisis.
Peace and order, illegal drugs, traffic gridlock and graft and corruption seem to have all gotten worse under President Aquino. There is serious talk about granting President-elect Duterte emergency powers to be able to tackle these huge problems. Currently, detained former President and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is leading the way by filing a bill that will do precisely that—grant President-elect Duterte sweeping powers to be able to solve the Metro Manila traffic gridlock. Even the business community is endorsing such a move. The influential and powerful Federation of Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce Inc. is wholeheartedly behind the idea.
But not everyone is on board. There are some lawmakers who have doubts as to the wisdom of such a move—and for good reason. It is difficult to find immediate solutions to a problem that has been building up for decades. As I wrote last week, it is necessary that before granting such emergency powers to solve the traffic gridlock, there must be specific plans so that when such powers are granted, the government will hit the road, running so to speak.
So far, what we have read and heard are the same old rhetoric of solutions that we have been hearing in the past. These have been tried half-heartedly but they did not work because of lack of political will on the part of the government. A case in point is the Balintawak area along Edsa. It shows the inability of the government to clear the road for motorists. Right now, the vendors are moving back. Tricycles and vehicles are now also back, parking along the road and thereby blocking the smooth flow of vehicular traffic.
If the government cannot even find a way to implement a doable solution to this traffic problem, how can we proceed to solve other more difficult traffic and transportation problems? Whom we need at this point are competent people to draw up a plan with new ideas that incoming President-elect Duterte can implement immediately when he assumes office.
It is also important that whoever President-elect Duterte appoints to help him must understand traffic and transportation. We have to bear in mind that traffic schemes like motorcycle lanes, rerouting or bike lanes will not ease traffic conditions. Some traffic and transportation-related facts might help the reader understand the severity of the problem at hand.
The total land area of Metro Manila is about 619.5 square kilometers with a population of roughly about 12,879,788. If we include the adjoining provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna and Batangas, it becomes the third most populated urban area in the world. It is difficult to get the exact number of vehicles currently registered in the National Capital Region but in 2014, there were some 2,222,370 vehicles registered in the NCR using some 5,000 kilometers of public roads which translate to about 444.5 vehicles per kilometer of road.
This kind of vehicle density is intolerable. In order to cut this by half, another 5,000 kilometers of roads will have to be built. We all know this is wishful thinking. The road figure itself is not 100-percent accurate; it is but an estimate, considering that figures are hard to find. There are some sources that indicate a road figure of some 1,032 kilometers of public roads in Metro Manila but this is way too low. The total number of vehicles registered in the NCR is 27 percent of the total number registered throughout the country.
Some transport studies point out that when it comes to public ridership, 46 percent use jeepneys, 32 percent use private cars, 14 percent use buses and only 8 percent use the rail. There is no figure for tricycles.
It would appear that 58 percent of commuters use public transport, 32 percent use private vehicles and the 10 percent either walk or use other means of transport like tricycles. These numbers tend to show that there is an increasing trend in private vehicle ownership. The bulk of ridership is still the jeepney which is an inefficient public transport mode because it occupies a lot of road space but carry very few passengers. Rail capacity will therefore have to be increased 30 percent to 40 percent in the medium term in order to have more road space for vehicles, but we are talking of five to seven years which is no comfort to the suffering public.
These statistics by themselves are daunting to a transport planner. Whomever President-elect Duterte appoints to help him do this Herculean job will certainly be working extremely hard in order to deliver.
It is not an enviable position. The Japanese International Cooperation Agency has estimated that more than P2 billion is lost daily to traffic congestion in Metro Manila. This is only bound to increase. This figure must have been arrived at by calculating gasoline consumption, the wear and tear of the vehicles plus health costs due to pollution caused by traffic.
Eighty-five percent of pollution in the NCR is also caused by vehicles. This says a lot about the effect of traffic gridlock to our health. So the question that has to be asked is: Can it be done? Hopefully, but not in the way we all want.
The timetable of the incoming administration is too optimistic. Still, miracles do happen and this is one we would all love to see succeed.
