Metro traffic one and a half years under PRRD
THE pre-Christmas seasons of last year and the year before can serve as a good comparative baselines to judge if Metro Manila show that with or without a functioning Inter-Agency Council “boots-on-the-ground”.
Adequate numbers is exactly what the Metro Manila Development Authority does not have. All the cops and MMDA and local government unit workers who are manning the metro’s main thoroughfares do not even amount to a third National Police’s Highway Patrol Group was again asked to go back to EDSA, it was more for the need to raise the body count rather than the need for highly trained law enforcement minds to argue the nuances of the anti-distracted driving law. Still, there is no lack of determined civil servants (including the power-tripping obsessives of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board) who were out to make examples of colorum vehicle-for-hire violators during the All Souls’ and All Saints’ holidays.
APEC redux
administration during the APEC Summit two years ago when we had to relive it all over last November. To make matters worse, delegates and guests of the Asean summit had to shuttle between the Mall of Asia complex by the Bay to Clark via the North Luzon Expressway, necessitating extreme lockdown security measures Manila. Commuters wondered if there was really no other way to host international summits without shutting down large swathes of the metropolis’ transport arteries. The ex-Davao mayor’s earlier - ing a papal visit – came to naught as the Asean summit proved, one more time, that security concerns still rule.
A man named Tim
One advantage former MMDA chief Tim Orbos had was that he wasn’t - enced outsider led astray by bumbling and unimaginative sub-alterns again? I refer to the wholesale lane segregation implemented with several gazillions worth of APEC budget-funded orange bollards and tire-shredding concrete wedges. Rehashing the same erroneous seg Mel Mathay in the mid-seventies should have been promptly junked. Not only did the barriers curtail business access, some of those diabolical wedges even capsized a brand-new City Bus.
Status quo, no!
First of three parts Secondly, Tim didn’t set out to change the world with legislatorinspired hare-brained ideas masquerading as silver bullets to slay -- pink/blue fences, prefab footbridges, u-turn slots, no left turns, scheduled bus stops, etc. -- were all implemented by Bayani Fernando but patchily maintained thereafter. Moreover, the ever-vigilant while the MMDA tightened the screws on private transportation while mass transit and public conveyances went to rot day by passing day. of the Greenhills bollard wall from Annapolis to Ortigas greatly
Succeeded by a general
Just like his successor, Gen. Danny Lim, Tim (later appointed as Undersecretary at the Transportation department) believed that negotiable. Fine-tuning whatever rules were in effect was a hallmark of his brief tenure at the MMDA, including urban clearways/ tow-away zones (Mabuhay/Christmas lanes) where no parking stakeholders accountable, selective access to the Cubao underpass for provincial buses, strict application of bus terminal ingress/ egress into the EDSA road right of way, and tough measures against illegal vending at the Balintawak market curbside, Guadalupe EDSA sidewalk and other MMDA footbridges. The Balintawak market is of particular note as sidewalk clearance, previously a rarity, has now become the rule. There won’t be excuse for Balintawak to backslide now that Lim is in charge. He is the same Danny Lim that successfully cleaned-up Payatas some time ago.
Bollards: use ‘em or lose ‘em
of those same orange bollards that caused so much mayhem in - application I saw was the long segregated Cubao-bound lane for - ing from West Avenue. The Trinoma arrangement is such a simple idea yet is so very effective.