Metro traffic kills relationships, too

I fully agree with Ira P. Pedrasa: “Traffic wreaks havoc on families, says study” (Front Page, 10/3/15).

As a working mom who juggles home and work, both the quality and quantity of time spent with my family have tremendously been affected. And the culprit is the worsening traffic condition in Metro Manila. Indeed, the traffic problem in the National Capital Region is a silent killer of healthy relationships, too.

Under normal conditions—no rain, via train—the minimum travel time from where I live in Quezon City to my workplace in Makati is four precious hours. And I commute every working day. It was never like this before.

This daily ordeal is never friendly to a mother like me who single-handedly attends to the needs of three growing-up girls. I find it unfortunate that much of my waking hours are spent idly on the road. How long can I last with this setup? Well, I do not know. What is clear though right now is that there is no day I am not late for office, where the call time is 8:00 a.m., notwithstanding a 15-minute “free-time allowance.”

This feeling of helplessness is shared, I am sure, by other city workers who are equally desperate, yet cannot do anything else but sigh.

Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (Edsa) is not the only available access road to Makati. There are other major roads, except that they must be decongested as well. One of these is the long stretch from Quezon Avenue in Quezon City up to España in Manila, at which point one can then proceed to Makati through the Philippine National Railways (PNR). Sadly, it seems the present administration focuses only on easing traffic along Edsa.

I have tried all possible routes, and all means of transportation from Quezon City to Makati—to no avail. Consequently, aside from the long hours spent on the road, my transportation expenses have gone up, cutting big into the family budget.

With the election season, one has yet to hear those aspiring after a public office (they have been singing the same generic line about their being pro-poor, pro-country, blah blah) how they are going to address the sickening traffic problem. The looming privatization of the PNR and its pending six-month closure due to its rehabilitation, to be sure, will make life more difficult to the riding public.

By the way, did the services of our Metro Rail Transit and the Light Rail Transit improve after the fare increases?

—BELEN DOCENA-ASUELO, [email protected]