Is traffic in Metro Manila solvable?

Everyone will likely agree with our two interviewees in this issue – Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade and Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Danilo Lim – that key to solving, or at least alleviating, the traffic mess on Metro Manila streets is driver discipline.

Perhaps, though, just as many will be quick to point out that it’s the other guy – that idiot in the new SUV who thinks he owns the road (“maganda nga ang kotse, gago naman

ang driver”); those stupid jeepney drivers stopping in the middle of the road and parking side by side, taking up to three lanes; that bastos taxi driver trying to make a left turn from the rightmost lane (“buti nga may Uber at Grab”) and all those raving maniacs on motorcycles – who doesn’t practice road discipline and courtesy.

But all of us will have to admit that at one time or another – or more often than that – we too have been guilty of beating the red light, making a turn when we shouldn’t have, perhaps even counterflowing or ducking into a one-way street.

Metro Manila traffic is often so very chaotic that it becomes a free-for-all – like when traffic lights go on the blink (all too often especially now with the constant rains) or when there is an accident or a stalled vehicle on the road. A friend from Singapore describes it as jungle driving, and it is a particularly apt description when you’re here in Port Area, among those humongous trucks and vans, where it really is survival of the fittest (meaning the most matapang).

MMDA chairman Lim makes a good point – too many cars on too little road space. Though unenforceable, the proposal not to allow purchase of a new car without proof of parking space makes sense. As it is, practically all the secondary roads – which could and should take some of the pressure off the main congested thoroughfares – have become parking lots, with cars on both sides at that, leaving only one lane for passing vehicles.

Secretary Tugade – the joke is that he moved the Department of Transportation to Clark in Pampanga just to avoid the traffic in Metro Manila – might finally get his emergency powers from Congress, but I don’t know that it’s going to offer the solutions to untangle this mess as they expect. At least hopefully the emergency powers will override the TROs that hound every single project the government aims to undertake.

There is a mega subway being planned, ambitiously set to be operational by 2022 (instead of the original date of 2024), but I’m not holding my breath. What I hope DOTr will do – immediately if not sooner – is get those existing rail lines working properly, with more train cars and more efficient service. This seems to be the most convoluted and discombobulated situation ever; aside from the MRT-3 suffering glitches practically every day, the not-so-common station still seems to be in limbo, literally neither here nor there.

So, is metro traffic solvable? Think about it next time you’re stuck in traffic, which will probably be sooner than you can read this.