THERE are several things wrong with the plan to extend the coverage of the number-coding scheme, as announced by the Department of Transportation.
The original number-coding scheme, which banned cars from the streets of Metro Manila one day a week, depending on their plate numbers, was aimed at reducing the volume of vehicles on the road to ease traffic.
Under the old scheme, banned cars could still be used during “window hours,” from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., since these were outside the rush hour.
Now, the so-called Inter-Agency Council on Traffic (I-ACT) and the Metro Manila Council (MMC) have decided to close that window on major thoroughfares, practically banning the use of thousands of vehicles for an entire day, and preventing thousands of residents from leaving their homes in their own cars.
The concept of keeping cars off major roads, even during the so-called window hours, makes sense only if other alternative routes are open to them. Thus, it makes sense to close the number coding window on Edsa, because there are many alternative roads to the main highway, and there are multiple intersections where it can be crossed.
The same cannot be said for other major thoroughfares that the I-ACT and MMC added arbitrarily, with little regard for the residents in the affected areas or the lack of alternative routes.
One example is Commonwealth Avenue, a 12.4-kilometer highway in Quezon City that starts from the Quezon Memorial Circle inside the Elliptical Road and passes through the areas of Philcoa, Tandang Sora, Balara, Batasan Hills and ends at Quirino Highway in the Novaliches Area. Along each segment of the highway are residential villages that have no other access to the rest of Metro Manila, save Commonwealth Avenue. The new number coding scheme traps them for an entire day—unless they leave at an ungodly hour and come home late at night.
The same could be said of other major roads that have been added—almost as an afterthought—to the no-window restriction.
In seeking to clear Metro Manila of traffic, the authorities ought not lose sight of the true objective, which is to ensure that people can get to and from work safely, comfortably and within a reasonable time. Compelling a fifth of car owners to use means other than their own vehicles once a week would be all right if decent and affordable public transport were available—but we all know this is not the case.
The true measure of success of traffic management isn’t how much you can inconvenience car owners, or how much you curtail their rights to use their hard-earned assets, as the new scheme clearly does. The true measure is how productive we can be. If the authorities banned all cars from the roads from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., they could brag that they had solved the traffic problem, but we would also be losing a whole lot of productivity.
