3 years later, Senate faces same problem

THREE years ago, at the start of the Duterte administration, Sen. Grace Poe led a Senate hearing on the traffic problem in Metro Manila, especially along Epifanio de los Santos Ave. (EDSA), focusing on a proposal for emergency powers to enable the Department of Transportation to solve the problem.

Last Tuesday, Senator Poe was again leading the Senate Committee on Public Services in a hearing, this time on a plan of the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to ban provincial buses from EDSA. All these years, it appears, the same problem on EDSA has remained unsolved. In fact, with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new vehicles, the EDSA traffic has become so much worse

The MMDA has lately been in the lead in the effort to solve the EDSA problem. It had earlier called for the setting up of interim terminals in Valenzuela, Bulacan, and Sta. Rosa, Laguna, where provincial buses would unload their passengers and city buses would then pick them up and take them to destinations inside Metro Manila. The MMDA held a dry run on his plan in the first week of August, but then it turned out that there were no city buses to bring the unloaded passengers to Metro Manila.

At the Senate hearing, the authority of the MMDA to carry out these projects was questioned. The Supreme Court, as early as 2000, had ruled that the MMDA, not being a local government unit or a public corporation endowed with legislative power,

cannot enforce its traffic plans. It is the LGUs that have authority.

At the Senate hearing, Undersecretary Mark de Leon of the Department of Transportation said the department has a plan for the construction of elevated “greenways” all over Metro Manila to encourage walking instead of commuting.

Later in a press briefing, presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo urged the public to send in any suggestion to help solve the traffic problem. There are already proposals to move more government offices outside of Metro Manila, he said. The Department of Transportation has already moved to Clark in Pampanga.

Panelo himself proposed nightshifts so some employees can have work shifts outside the normal 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. That would help relieve the heavy traffic in the morning when employees now come to work and in the afternoon when they go home.

There have been many other proposals to solve EDSA’s continuing traffic problem. President Duterte himself suggested one in his State of the Nation Address last July 21: Clear all city streets of illegally parked cars so these can be used as alternate routes by vehicles now forced to take EDSA.

The search for solutions continues. The MMDA obviously cannot do it on its own as it does not have the proper authority. The Senate hearing might be able to gather the various proposals and then Congress could grant the proper authority to whichever body is handed the problem.