A SOLUTION to the P3.5-billion daily loss to the traffic gridlock exists but the problem cannot be solved overnight, the Metro Manila Development Authority said Friday.
MMDA Assistant General Manager Jojo Garcia says it will take time to make the traffic problem go away because it is complex and was caused by poor urban planning 30 years ago.
“The solution is long-term and it includes building more infrastructure and more roads,” Garcia said in a radio interview.
“We have to decongest Metro Manila and to expand it.”
Garcia made his statement even as Senators Kerwin Gatchalian and Grace Poe said the development of a reliable and convenient mass transit system was the solution to Metro Manila’s traffic woes.
Gatchalian said the only solution to traffic problem was to expand the MRT and LRT or to build a subway.
“This is a tried and tested formula to reduce the volume of vehicles on the road,” Gatchalian said.
But he conceded that the problem was the 42 train coaches of the MRT that had not been used for the past three years.
Poe said the building of alternative roads and bridges and the building of economic centers outside Metro Manila were needed to solve the traffic problem.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara said the effective solution to the traffic gridlock were long-term and the government was now taking steps to solve it.
Senator Vicente Sotto III said the traffic problem was growing worse every day because the streets in Metro Manila were being used as parking lots.
Meanwhile, MMDA’s 2,000 traffic constables will continue to enforce traffic rules despite their diminished number and incomplete gear, Garcia said.
But he said within the next few months someone would be donating more than a thousand body camersa for the traffic constables.
Susumu Ito, chief representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency, noted in a presentation during the 36th Joint Meeting of the Japan-Philippines Economic Cooperation Committees that the country was losing P3.5 billion daily due to the extreme traffic in Metro Manila.
The estimate is nearly 50 percent higher than the P2.4-billion estimate in 2012 and is on track to meet JICA’s projection that the traffic jams in the key cities around the country would cost P6 billion a day by 2030.
The loss estimates were calculated based on the potential work wasted from the hours spent on the road by workers and delays in the delivery of goods, Garcia said.
A lack of infrastructure and the constant increase in the number of private vehicles on the road, poor road planning and a lack of discipline on the part of motorists further compound the problem.