Emergency!

I’m not going to write about the state of emergency in the country, but about emergencies and emergency powers. I’m thinking more about repeated references from President Duterte and his advisers to the need for “emergency powers” to deal with our traffic problem.

I did wonder why emergency powers would be needed, and someone told me some rather drastic measures were needed, such as getting subdivisions to open their roads to nonresidents. It does make sense, when you think of the kilometers of roads reserved for exclusive private use.

On the other hand, can you imagine what would happen if the administration does get emergency powers—and aren’t these available now, through the state of emergency?—and decides to get the subdivisions to open up?

The subdivisions would band together and get the Supreme Court to impose a temporary restraining order (TRO) on any such government action.

At first blush, it does seem the subdivisions are being socially irresponsible by shutting out public traffic. But I can understand the residents’ concerns, which involve mainly security and safety: the easy access of criminals from burglars to car thieves or worse, and the entry of large numbers of vehicles that cause air and noise pollution, as well as a possible rise in traffic mishaps, especially involving children.

It could be argued that these are upper-class issues, and that it is unfair that poor families have to endure all those problems because they don’t live in gated subdivisions.

But as a university administrator, I’ve had to deal with these challenges as well. People—alumni, faculty, students—complain all the time about traffic congestion inside UP Diliman, and so we had a transportation committee studying the movement of vehicles. We thought that maybe this reflected the growing affluence of UP students, and to some extent this is true.  We also found that the easy financing terms offered in the last two years by car dealers have meant a rapid rise in the number of new cars owned, not just by students but also faculty and staff. Moreover, parents said more of them were allowing their children to use cars to get to school because of the traffic congestion. Yes, a vicious cycle is operating here: traffic congestion causing even more congestion.

Rat-running

One surprising finding was that much of the traffic flow on campus was caused by non-UP motorists who use UP Diliman roads as a shortcut. Researching on the internet, I found a term, “rat-running,” referring to motorists using residential roads, side streets, even cemetery roads, to beat traffic congestion.

Then came the bomb threats early in September which, although we knew were hoaxes, did remind the UP administration that we needed to tighten security. We haven’t closed all our roads to public access but we are requiring car stickers for the use of some of our portals which we found were being used for rat-running.

I can empathize then with government agencies assigned to solve the traffic problem, and I support the idea of emergency powers as a response to transportation woes, with high priority for the traffic congestion around schools and hospitals.

When my two elder children started preschool and kindergarten some years back (the eldest is only 12, the next is 10), I agonized over the traffic congestion involving half an hour for a 1-kilometer trip.  I looked for solutions, like having the boy brought to school on a motorcycle, which cut the commute to 10 minutes, but with fears for his safety.

I finally made a bold exodus to Laguna, where the kids can get to school in five minutes flat… although I note there’s traffic buildup now around their school. I feel the move is worth it, even if it means I have to spend more time on the road to be with them. The irony is that I can get from Manila to Laguna in an hour at the right time of the day, and get stuck for two hours trying to get from UP Diliman to UP Manila or vice versa if it’s the rush hour.

Regarding the traffic around schools, specifically private schools, we know the problem comes from just too many cars, often one car bringing in and picking up just one student (maybe with yaya and bodyguard).

We’ve heard proposals to reduce traffic around schools by encouraging car pools, school buses and shuttles from designated sites.  We’ve also heard protests from parents who worry about their children’s security. That’s where government emergency powers might be put to use, perhaps to negotiate with subdivisions to allow limited passage through their roads for preapproved vehicles ferrying students to the schools, which tend to be located near or even in these subdivisions.

I have no doubt some of the resistance to a modified private/public hybrid system will be cultural. I remember, even back in the 1960s when I was in school, that there was a hierarchy of sorts: Kids who came in their own cars were rich, followed by kids who came in pooled rides. Kids who came in on school buses were “poor.” I see that such perceptions have remained, with students now labeling each other based on their car model. And when I asked my eldest daughter if she might want to use a bike, because the school is really so close to the house, she diplomatically invoked issues about bike safety, and added: “But no one goes to school in a bike.” I guess a bike puts you even lower than a school bus.

Parents have to understand there’s more to the problem than being late for class.  Traffic congestion means more air pollution, which has been shown to affect academic performance and increasing problems for children with respiratory problems like asthma.

Strokes

Imagine, too, when an asthmatic child gets a serious attack and needs to be rushed to hospital. The poor child might have to wait, if there is no ambulance, for the car to get through traffic congestion. I’ve even heard a story about a mother whose son needed emergency care but her car reached a gridlock about a kilometer away from the hospital. The story goes that she waved down a motorcyclist and convinced him to take her and her son to the hospital.

Well and good, but what if the patient is a senior citizen, or an expectant mother?  Or, irony of ironies, a victim of a vehicle collision?

Again, the government should invoke emergency powers to come up with alternative routes to hospitals, rat runs through subdivisions or impromptu creation of emergency lanes, with or without an ambulance.  Yes, I know how ambulances always have several opportunistic private vehicles racing behind the ambulance but emergencies are emergencies.

Long-term measures are badly needed, certainly, including requiring new hospitals and schools to be built only in areas with adequate space for expansion of roads, and pedestrians. Ultimately, the need for efficient mass transit remains, to get more people to their destinations quickly, and reducing the number of private vehicles on the road.

The analogies between the health of our bodies and that of our roads are only too painful: Our roads are so much like blood vessels with plaques and blood clots, threatening to cause strokes, the most dangerous of which are those around schools, and hospitals.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph