The year-end holidays bring with them a mad rush of consumers in department stores and supermarkets, each eager to buy gifts and food items in preparation for yuletide and New Year’s celebrations. The seasonal hassle of traffic jams and lining up in long queues for our purchases is something that we have learned to tolerate given the festive move and air of goodwill that this once a year celebration affords all of us, both the young and old, rich or poor.
What is intolerable however is the regular experience of the perennial lines we go through along the tollgates in our highways like the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) and the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX). This problem has been with us for so long that it is high time that we applied a responsive solution to it.
To say the least, the convenience offered to motorists by the highways is significantly diminished by the presence of different toll operators that implement their own ticketing systems. The continuous need to stop and follow the long queues along the toll ways does not only result in the psychic frustration and mental stress for public and private motorists as well as the riding public. The inefficiency resulting in the number of hours wasted just to successively line up to pay at every connector of each operator’s entry (thereby negating the idea of a superhighway) similarly has definite costs to our economy and productivity due to wasted man-hours among others.
For this reason we fully support the move of Senate President Franklin Drilon to file a resolution seeking for a probe into tollway operators’ practice of having different ticketing systems for the various superhighways in the country. The resolution should hopefully be a precursor so that legislation for a single ticketing system for all the operators of our highways will be eventually approved and signed into law, and consequently provide the needed level of efficiency to truly upgrade our superhighways.
Corollary to this, I would like to point out that the concept of the resolution however is not new, as we have had the same idea since the start of the 16th Congress. As a matter of fact, my wife, incumbent Rep. Aleta Suarez had already filed resolution No. HR00884, “Resolution by the house of Representatives requiring the different toll operators to come up with a single ticketing system for our superhighway network” as early as
25 February 2014. The resolution seeks to address the aforementioned problem by requiring toll operators to come up with a single ticketing system for the superhighways in Luzon, including NLEX, SCTEX, South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), and the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX).
Having said this, the situation therefore similarly presents a very good reminder of how the opposition is treated under this administration. There is actually a minefield of opposition-filed bills that are brilliant, but are not heard just because of personality-based politics. Bills and resolutions such as this single ticketing system and the proposed Barangay Pension Bill should be immediately be heard to benefit the whole nation; but due to the fact that the bills were filed by those in the opposition, these have been placed in the back burner while bills authored by administration allies are given priority. Maybe part of the administrations resolution for the New Year should include lessening this habit of personality-based politics so that we can at least have a modicum of improvement to set the tone for the next administration come 2016.