Death by traffic

Not even the President can escape traffic.

When a super typhoon hits, the bayanihan spirit rekindles and we all pitch in. When a power shortage looms, our leaders debate emergency powers. In the direst political crisis, Filipinos implicitly trust that they can peacefully return to

Edsa. However, caught in Metro Manila’s permanent traffic jam, no one looks beyond his own miserable patch of road and the endless rush hour cursing on social media. Should we not be treating traffic like any other disaster and take decisive, coordinated action from the highest level?

The Philippine Bar Association celebrated its anniversary on a rainy night last June. My fellow officers waited patiently for our guest of honor, the President, until someone announced that his advance party had just arrived. We stood in surprise when the President walked in, and with a smile explained that his advance party was still caught in traffic.

If even the President is at the perpetual gridlock’s mercy, how much more the ordinary worker with no car, chauffeur and convoy? We can no longer ignore the economic cost of this anecdote multiplied millionfold. To our great embarrassment, the New York Times’ recent feature told the world that Manila traffic costs the country $20 billion in lost productivity each year, the aggregate of many of us spending an insane 20-25 hours a week to get to work and back.

Manila is the Philippines’ beating heart, but its arteries are so clogged that the slightest fall of rain sends it into uncontrollable convulsions. But it is striking how we still take this for granted. We have realized that typhoons hit us every year and have begun to lay plans to mitigate them, despite their being products of nature. In stark contrast, traffic is a manmade phenomenon yet we its creators are paralyzed in a mindset of helplessness against it.

Mindset is critical. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have seen firsthand that megacities without traffic are not a figment of the imagination. Living in the likes of London and Singapore, I consciously did not want to own a car and reveled in the freedom of hopping on and off subways and buses or simply taking short walks. OFWs know all too well that millionaires in New York take the train to work and the Dutch prime minister takes his bicycle. This realization must jolt us into questioning whether controlling traffic is a matter of resources or a matter of political will.

A simple Google search reveals that we are aware of the many solutions but have yet to implement them in any unified manner. While we do need more flyovers and highways, we all know that we can never build enough roads. However, public transport remains tedious and unreliable. During peak hours, one must line up for over an hour at an MRT or LRT station for a 20-minute ride. Commuters pack themselves into a train that obviously has too few cars and push to occupy every inch of space, even thrusting face against stranger’s armpit. The tedious journey is exacerbated by inefficient ticket lines and inconvenient transfers, as anyone who has run the mini-maze to change lines at Araneta Center knows. Buses, jeepneys and FX taxis are hardly efficient, and I have been mugged in a jeepney in broad daylight.

We must at some point develop true mass transit systems as a long-term solution, along with the linkages to get people to their final destinations. However, there are intermediate solutions that can be implemented more quickly, such as the bus rapid transit systems, a cross between bus and subway, being discussed for Manila and Cebu. The Pasig River ferry is another more immediate solution. I have tried Mexico City’s BRT and Bangkok’s river taxi, and found both quite efficient. At the very least, we must ensure that our emerging provincial centers are better planned than the chaotic sprawl that is now Metro Manila.

There are many other small solutions, such as consciously constructing bicycle-friendly streets, promoting carpool apps such as Tripid.ph, and monitoring bottlenecks such as cars lined up at U-turn slots of otherwise clear highways. However, the most immediate solution is really to enforce traffic rules. Driving before writing this, I saw a motorcycle moving slowly in the fast lane despite the cars honking behind it. Two trucks on either side of me cut into my lane without changing, forcing me to stop. A bus swerved to the left, blocking all but one lane of Edsa, before swerving again to turn right. Vehicles are parked on either side of side streets, leaving one narrow lane open. And pedestrians cross the middle of highways nonchalantly.

Beyond mindset, political will and an array of known solutions, perhaps what is truly missing is determined direction all the way from the top. Perhaps it is time to appoint a traffic czar to move the solutions we are already aware of through the maze of government entities involved, from the Department of Public Works and Highways to local governments. Perhaps it is time to treat traffic like any other calamity and finally lead the citizenry accordingly, instead of leaving traffic as countless individual bad decisions.

The 1990s paintings of Emmanuel Garibay and Jeho Bitancor depict Manila in a palette of dull yellows, oranges and browns. Their chosen colors capture a city atmosphere that is inexplicably enervating. The impossible traffic explains why one feels a certain fatigue living in Manila, why we seem to die a little each day. We had better take definitive action now before our roads turned parking lots become our graveyards.

Oscar Franklin Tan (@oscarfbtan, facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan) cochairs the Philippine Bar Association Committee on Constitutional Law and teaches at the University of the East.