‘Cars are the problem’

ulations to rein in car ownership.

Second, there is always a escape clause for people who would rather buy cars and help choke the crippled roads rather than taking the better option of taking the many modes of mass transport. Mass transport is unsafe, mass transport is unreliable, mass transport deprives one of the status symbol that comes with car ownership.

Our leaders are also car nuts. Remember the embarrassing episode in the middle of the term of Mr. Aquino. When he acquired a used Porsche. Our leaders in Congress—both chambers and with very few exceptions— are car nuts as well. One senator is part owner of a luxury car dealership.

Third, there is a subset of journalists that promotes cars. These journalists nurture the fantasy that owning a car is the best thing in life. And, in the process, blame the cars they love and promote.

We are perhaps the only the country in the world that has it backwards – cars over mass transport. Even Munich, I have written about this a thousand times, is moving dramatically to shed its image as the “Car Capital of the World“into a city that restricts cars to promote walking, biking and mass transport. Troubled Barcelona is bitterly divided on the separation issue but not on banning cars from roads and other public spaces.

Singapore is host to the boldest experiment to restrict cars and promote mass transport. It is easier and cheaper, they say, to have a second wife in Singapore than own and maintain a used car.

To most Filipinos, “Carmaggedon “is fake news. The sad thing is, it is reality and unless steps are taken now to rein in car use, Metro Manila will be at a standstill, the to die because of the senseless addiction to cars and the failure of policy to deal with the obvious.