First of two parts

Legislators and local government officials have offered a plethora of solutions to the traffic mess but more midnight oil needs to be burned to achieve headway against Metro Manila’s seemingly insurmountable problem. It will entail even more severe measures than what Pasig City applies, like the four-person high occupancy vehicle lanes and discriminatory odd-even bans that virtually exclude non-residents from the use of nationally funded public roads. Still, there has been some improvement credited to the stricter application of traffic enforcement in salient zones of the metro’s streets.

Qualified, though, inasmuch as some traffic zones have reached some sort of routine predictability, allowing motorists to regularize their schedules. Our EDSA commuting circle has experienced this over the latter part of last year’s long Christmas season up to the beginning of the school summer break. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Skyway traffic – not even considering the toll plaza traffic fiasco – has become steadily worse, forcing SOMCO to resort to frequent and prolonged counterflows. Traffic authorities are hamstrung by a huge backlog in hiring traffic aides, who are now sporting spiffier uniforms with floppy Spanish-style berets instead of British styles. Moreover, the churn rate hardly adds troopers on the ground because the MMDA is forced to shed malperforming and corrupt traffic aides/enforcers. Thankfully, PNP HPG expertise is always ready to untangle difficult gridlocks that usually hit half of Makati’s national road network.





At least the MMDA’s CCTV network has augmented traffic enforcement, compensating somewhat for the shortage of traffic enforcers. The Mabuhay lanes with stricter obstruction clearing have made the alternate routes genuine workable alternatives and are even used to reroute buses heading for their Cubao terminals. EDSA’s Balintawak market zone has never been this disciplined ever since the market grew from some 30 years ago. Credit is due to improved barangay cooperation with the MMDA and Ayala’s new Cloverleaf development that made sense of traffic flow. EDSA bollard placements on the Quezon City u-turns are the most workable so far since MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando started the u-turn system in 2004. C-5’s truck lane seems to be working fine, now on its 4th year, but the major blunder is the at-grade traffic light junction for McKinley. Megaworld should be compelled to invest in its own grade-separated interchange at this junction just as the BCDA spent tons of money on the interchange system of BGC. Overall, Chairman Danny Lim of the MMDA and Transportation Undersecretary Tim Orbos (now with the i/ACT) have delivered both low hanging fruit and intransigent systemic problems (parking obstructions on side streets).

Mel Mathay’s record in the Metro Manila Commission in 1974, even if he was acting under the orders of Metro Manila Governor Imelda R. Marcos, is a very tough act to follow. From the day the MMDA’s predecessor was conceived, the MMC was expected to simultaneously untangle the Greater Manila Area’s traffic mess, keep the roads clean and landscaped, prevent flooding, collect garbage and keep hawkers and squatters at bay. Not only did Mathay have the support of all the mayors of the metro, he also had the support of the national government through the INP, DoTC and DPWH and also by the unitary bus franchise holder, Metro Manila Transit Corp.

The new Cory administration replaced Mathay with Joey Lina, who was to have a difficult time as government coffers were nearly empty. With little to spend, roads remain unmended, garbage mounted to near epidemic proportions, floods aggravated, and hawkers and squatters abounded. MMC’s traffic enforcement duties, like enforcing the yellow lane, were even assumed by the “chocolate boys” of Transportation Secretary Oscar Orbos. The Ramos era ushered in some hopeful mass transit projects with the MMDA under Prospero Oreta, now spearheading traffic reduction measures to make way for the construction of the MRT-3 with the odd-even ban on EDSA, which later morphed into the UVRRP or coding.

The Estrada administration appointed staunch ally Jejomar Binay to chair the MMDA while his wife, Elenita, was elected mayor of Makati City to fill in while Binay cooled his heels waiting for term limits to expire. Nothing much was notable about the Binay term apart from his band of loyalists who supported Estrada, wreaking havoc in Makati against those who wanted to impeach him. The GMA era was marked by the hyperactive Bayani Fernando, who introduced many new urban congestion ideas to; dog-bone u-turns, pink and blue fences, “gwapotels”, stockades for vagrants and homeless, segregated bus stops, demolition of RROW encroachments and a very tough line against hawkers, vendors and squatters. BF was the first and only MMDA chair who alleviated the plight of the private motorist by suspending coding during the off-school summer months and introducing the 0900-1500 window.

The PNoy administration had Francis Tolentino and Emerson Carlos run the MMDA and the two basically fine-tuned many of the good ideas implemented by BF. It went further with BF’s contact-less traffic violation policing through a network of CCTVs taking photos of offending vehicles and posting the offenders license plates on “mayhuliba” website. A summons was mailed to the owner of the offending vehicle, taking note of the traffic offense and instructing the payment of a fine at a popular bank. It wasalso during this time that several circumferential and radial roads reached 12-hour saturation, all the more highlighting the need to “build, build, build” as the new Duterte government espouses.

So far, the trickiest problem building roads, bridges, flyovers, tunnels and railways is the acquisition of road or rail right-of-way. Here, expediency to push long-delayed infra projects for the benefit of the public at large clashes with the enshrined rights of private property owners. Delays and court suits ensue as the compensation for the owners of the property that is to be expropriated under the state’s exercise of the right of eminent domain (basically the public interest’s supremacy over the individual’s property rights) is far from current fair market value. Legislators need to consider raising the compensation and adjusting the parameters of the Commission on Audit so that the payment is legally binding and properly evidenced for purposes of transparency. Work in process for lawyers.

The next problem is the laborious process of vetting and approving bids for infrastructure projects financed under the General Appropriations Act. This is a necessary check and balance, vigilantly audited by COA, to ensure transparency and fairness in meeting the project’s bid requirements. Build-operate-transfer projects under the public-private partnership scheme will also need to accelerate, especially now that there will no longer be an exorbitant franchise premium over and above the project cost. The current administration is thankfully open to unsolicited proposals, which, like any infra project, needs to speed through the Investment Coordinating Council and NEDA before it is subjected to a Swiss challenge. A recent hurdle is what Duterte truly means in his proclaimed distaste for lowest bids, which to him equates to lowest possible quality. This throws a spanner into accepted practice that awards the project to the lowest bidder. Technocrats have to draft the criteria by which a bid can be considered the winner if the lowest bid is no longer the benchmark.

The above cited factors are safeguards of the money entrusted by the public, but like all check and balance safeguards this takes a lot of time since everyone wants to make sure that fast-track measures do not break the law or put the public at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, the metro’s traffic crisis is a ticking time bomb. With long legal reviews pending, adding more roads to address the space shortage and fast-tracking the approval of such projects will not happen overnight. This leaves us with the last crucial stick that we hope the government can wield: traffic management.

The PNP HPG chief previously estimated that a total complement of 13,000 traffic enforcers, traffic aides and support personnel, sourced from the police and the LGUs, are needed to keep the metro moving along 24/7. By early 2017, this figure was updated to 22,000. To date, there are at most a little over 2,347 aides, each of whom is not guaranteed to be supplied with communications, transport and logistics support. What to do? Get started with the recruiting and training, which the MMDA has done with the help of the private sector. Emergency powers may be needed for this Herculean task.

How about enhanced but limited access to private property subdivision roads and military camps to bypass traffic? The agreement to allow qualified passage through the Veterans Memorial Hospital compound, Fort Aguinaldo and a short but vital section of Bel-Air village abutting EDSA are steps in the right direction. It’s a matter of sitting down with the village associations and military commanders to assure the residents of their privacy and to commit to repairing/maintaining the relevant roads while enhancing security, during the periods of time that the public needs to transit through the private roads. Emergency powers may only be needed for really stubborn subdivisions. But it is incumbent on the government to convince the stakeholders – village associations and the military – that their security will not be compromised.

To be continued

Tito F. HERMOSO is Autoindustriya’s INSIDE MAN

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