Costs and causes of Metro’s traffic jams

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas


Nearly every overseas Filipino who has visited the Philippines in the last several years has one common complaint – the horrendous traffic jams in Metro Manila. What normally takes 20 minutes to travel now takes from one hour to two hours depending on which road you are using and what time you are traveling. And rush hour in Metro Manila is basically the whole day, not two hours before offices open or two hours after offices close as in the case of Los Angeles or other big American cities.

Where before one got caught in heavy traffic only in Manila, Makati, Pasay City, Quezon City and certain parts of San Juan and Paranaque, now one experiences traffic jams even in faraway places such as Cavite, Laguna and Bulacan.

It was not a surprise therefore when Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan – yes, the same Cabinet member who said poverty remains a major problem despite the hefty economic growth – revealed a study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that the country loses P2.4 billion daily in potential income due to traffic congestion. The government has tapped JICA to help come up with a transportation development road map for the country.

In 1999, JICA and the Department of Transportation and Communication placed the annual losses due to traffic in Metro Manila at P140 billion. Of this figure, P40 billion went to direct losses, such as wasted gasoline, lost labor hours, employment of traffic aides, and wasted electricity, while P100 billion went to indirect losses, like missed business opportunities and reduced capital inflow due to investors shying away from the country, among others.

The JICA study said that the average speed of vehicles was 12.6 kilometers per hour (about 8.4 mph), but recent estimates showed that the average speed of vehicles sometimes hit as low as 6 to 8 kilometers per hour.

In August last year, a study by the University of the Philippines National Center for Transportation Study (UP NCTS) placed the average annual losses incurred due to traffic congestion in Metro Manila at over P137.5 billion ($3.3 billion) in 2011 alone. The study noted that the country has lost more than P1.5 trillion since 2001 due to traffic.

The loss in productivity is almost as much as two months worth of remittances and equivalent to 1.4% of the total Philippine economy, the study added. Indeed, the monstrous traffic jams have turned away foreign investors because of possible loss in productivity, delayed deliveries, and missed appointments and opportunities.

The 1999 JICA study identified the following main reasons for the traffic: Bad driving habits, inadequate traffic enforcement, and poorly coordinated infrastructure projects.

Balisacan said the country has to boost infrastructure spending to help alleviate the traffic congestion. He noted the “huge backlog in almost all types of infrastructure.” He said that the government intends to invest in more roads, bridges, railways, airports, and sea ports during the remainder of President Aquino’s term.

He noted that compared with neighboring countries, the Philippines spends significantly less on public infrastructure at only 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012, against the 5 percent average spending in other Southeast Asian countries.

The government has lined up several infrastructure projects to address the traffic problem, among these the LRT Lines 1 and 2 extensions, the MRT 7 that will run from EDSA to San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, an elevated highway on Edsa, the NLEX-SLEX connector road, and the North Rail project linking Metro Manila and Clark in Pampanga. But for some reason, none of these projects have been implemented despite the fact that funds have been allocated for them.

Haunted by paranoia over anomalies in the awarding of contracts, the Aquino administration has delayed the awarding of these and other public works contracts. Rappler.com, for example, pointed out that two companies want to link the major toll roads — NLEX in the north and SLEX in the south — to ease traffic in Metro Manila but the government has not formally awarded either of the two proposed connector roads and neither can move forward with the construction.

Rappler.com also noted that the government already missed some of its initial bid deadlines that would extend the existing light rail to Bacoor, Cavite. Two years since infrastructure was touted as the key source of economic growth, it said, only one in the growing list of infrastructure projects has been awarded.

But apart from the delayed infrastructure projects that could help ease traffic congestion, especially in Metro Manila, are the messed-up traffic projects put up by the Metro Manila Development Authority under former MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando, such as the 120 U-turn slots throughout Metro Manila that have not only clogged instead of ease traffic and driven GPS units crazy, but have also made driving in the metropolis confusing and chaotic. These U-turn slots have to go.

Another factor cited by the 1999 JICA study is the inadequate law enforcement of traffic laws. This, of course, has been a problem long before the cars in Metro Manila grew to almost two million in Metro Manila and the Metro population burst to nearly 16 million.

The country has more than adequate laws to put some order to the chaotic traffic situation in the urban centers, but many of the enforcers – from the traffic policeman to the MMDA traffic enforcers to the barangay tanods – would rather look the other way to boost their meager income than discipline erring drivers with traffic tickets and fines.

Despite promises of curbing corruption throughout the bureaucracy, the Aquino administration has not really done anything to impress upon these lowly traffic enforcers that it means business, and so it’s business as usual for these corrupt lawmen and thus, the country’s roads have remained as messy, if not messier, as they have been.

Metro Manila does not have a monopoly of having too many cars in too little roads. During rush hours, America’s freeways and major roads are bursting to the seams with cars and trucks of all types, but traffic moves and eventually eases up because most drivers are disciplined and practice road courtesy.

I drove for more than 15 years in Metro Manila before immigrating to the United States. But I don’t think I’d last an hour without hitting or getting hit by another motorist if I tried driving there again. Filipino drivers have just become bolder and more reckless in driving in and out of the crowded roads. It’s not as much as a force of habit than as a necessity to get to one’s destination as fast as possible. In that kind of traffic, every minute you gain is as important as getting out of it alive.

Malacanang, which has shown its reactive rather than pro-active stance in many issues that have been raised before, again promised to decongest the main roads by “possibly banning provincial buses from the belt highway Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), pushing through with the widening of secondary roads, and enforcing traffic rules more strictly.”

When it intends to do all that, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte is not saying. Perhaps in 2016?

(valabelgas@aol.com)