The proposed emergency powers for the Transportation Department headed by Secretary Arthur Tugade would be “useless” without transportation experts leading the agency, according to a think tank.
“There is science to urban traffic. It cannot be solved by brainless trial and error, nor by brute force, or by thousands of lawyers. As I said before, emergency powers will be useless without technical know-how; with liberal use of knowledge, emergency powers is superfluous,” Rene Santiago, president of Bellweather Consultancy, told Manila Standard.
Transportation undersecretary for rails and toll roads Noel Kintanar recently resigned from his post amid continuing criticism of potential conflicts of interest at the department. Kintanar was Ayala Corp.’s head of business development and corporate strategy and executive vice president of AC Infrastructure Holdings Inc.
Tugade was a businessman and lawyer from Cagayan province before joining the Transportation Department.
Santiago said the new government would unlikely resolve the traffic situation in the country “if the criterion is the draft bill the DoTr submitted to Congress.”
The Transportation Department submitted documents containing the list of priority projects and a draft bill to justify the emergency powers for Duterte to reduce traffic congestion.
Under the draft bill, the department proposed to unify the rules on traffic management which is currently handled by various agencies such as Land Transportation Office, Land Transportation, Franchising and Regulatory Board, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and the local government units.
A study by Japan International Cooperation Agency estimated the cost of traffic at P2.4 billion a day. Without intervention, Jica estimated that traffic costs would increase to P6 billion a day.
According to online database Numbeo, the Philippines was the 10th country in the world with the worst traffic conditions as of mid-2016.
The Philippines had a traffic index score of 199.66 based on Numbeo’s traffic index in the 2016 mid-year report.
Santiago also said the agency’s obsession with railways for an archipelagic country is “misguided and bound to leave us poorer and indebted for dysfunctional railways.”
The DOTr plans to build five to six railways until the end of the Duterte administration.
Santiago also said the cable car system that was being proposed by Tugade was not a part of the master plan for the Greater Capital region under the study made by Jica.
“If it strays outside of that framework, then DoTr has the wrong priorities,” Santiago said.