DoTr wants you to arrive for work within 35 minutes
The Department of Transportation (DoTr) is on a roll, kicking off 2018 like a possessed government agency that’s racing against time. Well, time is indeed running out after the President himself proclaimed that Metro Manila would be dead in 25 years. A prognosis that is down mostly to traffic congestion and overpopulation.
And so, DoTr Secretary Arthur P. Tugade and his team wasted no time in getting the ball rolling for the New Year.
On January 5th, a ceremony was held in Marilao, Bulacan, to commence pre-construction activities for Phase 1 of the DoTr’s Philippine National Railways (PNR) Clark project. The segment will connect Tutuban in Manila to Malolos in Bulacan via a 38- kilometer railway system consisting of 10 stations. Our transport officials are claiming that some 340,000 passengers will be served daily by this PNR train network.
The grand plan is to extend this railway system all the way to Tuguegarao in Cagayan. For now, Phase 2, a 70-kilometer stretch from Malolos to Clark in Pampanga, is also in the works, its budget already approved by the National Economic and Development Authority.
And then, on January 8th, the DoTr formally broke ground for the construction of the Southeast Metro Manila Expressway (SEMME), otherwise known as the C6 Expressway Project. The real work will begin in April.
SEMME is a 34- kilometer, six- lane highway from FTI in Taguig City to the Batasan Complex in Quezon City. Once finished, the thoroughfare will subsequently be connected to the North Luzon Expressway by way of Balagtas. The first phase of the project is set for completion by 2020, although knowing how our government operates, we had all better manage our expectations.
Anyway, one thing struck me about these projects. In its press statement, the DoTr says that the PNR Clark project will enable commuters to travel from Tutuban to Malolos in 35 minutes. In another press document, this time for the SEMME project, it is asserted that travel time from Bicutan to Quezon City will be reduced to just, um, 35 minutes.
What’s with 35 minutes? Is there psychology behind this figure? Did the DoTr engineers conduct an actual study or field survey that yielded the specific time period? Or are our transport officials just throwing around baseless numbers to make themselves sound credible? Perhaps if they can dangle a desirable public- transport scenario before our traffic- weary eyes, nobody will question the budget they now have at their disposal.
Very curious about the significance of “35 minutes” within the context of transportation, I searched online for potentially related articles or theses. I did find something.
In May 2015, the Université de Montréal in Canada published a study about how commuting time can contribute to burnout among employees traveling to and from work. “The risk of burnout increases significantly when a commute lasts more than 20 minutes,” the article postulates. “Above 35 minutes, all employees are at increased risk of cynicism toward their job.”
Thirty-five minutes. That’s the general mental threshold for humans, apparently, before we start getting restless sitting in traffic — after which we begin wondering about the meaning of life, the inadequacy of our salary, the vileness of our boss, and the idiocy of our transportation officials.
“The effects of the duration of a commute on a person’s mental health vary according to the type of transport used and the profile of the area where the person works,” the article points out. That’s the troubling part. It looks like 35 minutes is the psychological brink in developed countries, where buses and trains are clean and orderly, where roads are excellent, and where traffic management is first- class. With the poor motoring conditions that we have in the Philippines, I imagine it takes just five minutes on the road before we snap. Which explains the daily road rage- related incidents we read about in the news.
Is the DoTr aware of such findings? Is this the reason they keep mouthing off “35 minutes?” I don’t know. I doubt it. I’m almost sure they just rolled dice every time they needed to cite estimates for the travel times. Of course, I’d love to be proven wrong. I would love for any DoTr official to tell me that their “35 minutes” has solid foundation — that they arrived at those digits after careful research work.
Because if I can be convinced that the Department of Transportation is meticulous enough to validate even something as seemingly harmless as a travel time estimate, I will be more inclined to believe that the abovementioned projects will turn out okay. Until then, everything else sounds PR to me. Nothing more, nothing less.
What’s with 35 minutes? Is there psychology behind this figure? Did the DoTr engineers conduct an actual study or field survey that yielded the specific time period? Or are our transport officials just throwing around baseless numbers to make themselves sound credible?