Another traffic scheme going to waste?

Is the “new” traffic control scheme yet another doomed initiative of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) at taxpayers’ expense? The project replicates the wasted investment of Makati a decade ago when hundreds of millions of taxpayer pesos were invested in a similar scheme with exactly the same objective. That projected improved traffic control system failed miserably.

An assessment made by international analysts pointed to many factors for the system’s failure—such as the lack of commitment on the part of the authorities; a lack of understanding of the system on the part of the public; the lack of personnel to regulate the system; interference by uneducated traffic enforcers who overrode the system; and drivers, particularly jeepney drivers, who stopped within the monitored zone and who had no knowledge of driving regulations or understanding of the white demarcation lines indicating the points where the vehicles should stop or of the yellow box law in the middle of the intersection. (But where are the yellow boxes today?)

Will another expensive project that will not be effected once payment has been made for it line more pockets? It has been proven elsewhere that such a scheme can only succeed if the same is backed up by extensive public education, trained and reliable enforcers and a technological infrastructure to monitor and control the citywide complex system.

There is so much local and international experience to tap. Why the expensive trips abroad, at taxpayers’ expense, to confirm the lessons already learned overseas and right here over the last decade? If companies want to sell expertise and business in Manila, the business rules are simple—let them come here, at their expense, to explain the current technology and experiences. Why must the Philippine government fund an expensive trip to gather lessons that are openly available from international and local analyses of the past Makati experience, or that visiting suppliers of the “new” technology can teach?

And does the MMDA have the determination to enforce its regulations through its own enforcers? With most traffic laws and its own regulations, the MMDA has miserably failed to show such determination to this day, so what hope is there with the new traffic light scheme? So many unenforced MMDA regulations and bungled projects. Will this be another one?

—COLIN HUNT,

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