"Let’s just move to the Pacific countryside."
We have been talking about the worsening of metro traffic in my previous articles. Indeed it has gotten worse. Weeks ago, one of the facilities of the Light Rail Transit Line 2 caught fire. This unfortunate incident compounded the traffic woes of commuters, especially those living in the east of Metro Manila. Last Oct. 11, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo took the commuting challenge; he himself spent four hours traveling from his home going to his Malacañang office.
In the Asian Development Outlook 2019 released last September by the Asian Development Bank, Metro Manila was tagged as the most congested city among the congested cities with a population of at least 5 million in developing Asia. In 2017, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Follow Up Survey estimated P5.4 billion worth of losses in the country daily due to traffic.
The traffic, according to renowned urban planning specialist Jun Palafox, costs Filipinos at least nine to 15 years of their lives because of all the lost hours traveling. That, I can say, is too much for Filipinos to bear.
I have repeatedly proposed the transfer of the national government offices to a new government center which will give Metro Manila room to breathe and be rehabilitated, in order to provide citizens a better quality of life.
Looking at the Philippine history, past leaders have come up with their own masterplans in establishing the capital of the country. In 1905, the Burnham Plan envisioned Manila as the country’s capital site. In 1941, then-President Manuel L. Quezon commissioned the Frost-Arellano Plan which laid down a blueprint of all government offices to be situated in Quezon City. A subsequent master plan in 1949 was approved by the then Capital City Planning Commission created by virtue of Republic Act 333.
All these plans were geared toward a coordinated construction and development of governance centers. Unfortunately, past transfers led to a divided concentration of government offices in different locations in Metro Manila. This impedes the efficient flow of and delays government processes and services.
Many have provided suggestions in addressing the urban congestion in the NCR but to no avail. As I have said before, the metro is impossibly congested, and it badly needs some breathing space. We need to find a more suitable location for our government offices.
At the risk of being repetitive, I say once more that the countryside is just waiting for development. We have a beautiful Pacific countryside which may serve as a strategic location as the center of government. It offers a clean slate for infrastructure development. City and rural planners would be able to strategize the development of a new government center which would be sustainable, efficient, and convenient, taking into consideration its potential growth. At the same time, it offers new settlement areas that will help decongest Metro Manila and provide livelihood in the rural areas.
It is high time that we brought this proposal into the spotlight. Even Mr. Palafox has suggested the same. Let us learn from this situation and allow Manila to be rehabilitated.
I urge our national leaders to seriously consider this proposal to put an end, once and for all, to the agony of our commuting public who are mostly the working sector, the bastions of our economic growth. Our workforce will not decrease in the coming years. Our traffic situation, and the congestion of the metro should teach us that it is better to plan for the future than act and react to situations that could have been avoided.
