The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) was reported to have stumbled upon an effective way to ease traffic congestion along Edsa by fully implementing the “no window hours” policy relative to the number-coding scheme already in place (“Drop in Edsa car volume seen,” Metro, 10/17/16). Always quick to point to the sheer volume of private vehicles as its favorite excuse for the traffic mess, it is now saying that around 20-percent reduction might finally do the trick.
Here’s a news flash to the “brilliant minds” running the MMDA: Even if 50 percent of private vehicles are removed from the streets of Metro Manila, as long as the MMDA is too effete or too corrupt to enforce discipline among jeepney and bus drivers who have now acquired the callousness to disregard all traffic rules and regulations at will, the same choke points and gridlocks will continue to mess things up.
When traffic enforcers look the other way in the face of such pandemic recklessness, is any suspicion of payola lining some pockets in high places far-fetched? Would those drivers be so bold as to flaunt their unbridled recklessness?
Has anyone ever noticed how traffic flow almost always deteriorates to a crawl as it approaches jeepney and bus loading/unloading points anywhere in Metro Manila? That’s because jeepney and bus drivers seldom bother to fall in line to load or unload passengers. In their rush to get ahead of each other, they have no problem blocking two or three lanes. Drivers of other vehicles squeezing through the narrowest lane left for them to pass through could only cuss and curse upon seeing that nothing else up ahead has caused their hours-long torture and delay on the road. Observing clusters of MMDA personnel some hundred meters thence, waving like stupid scarecrows where no more obstruction exists, only makes ordinary mortals really want to run over them.
A common sight in point: On any supposedly leisurely Sunday drive, south-bound traffic along Roxas Boulevard from Rizal Park is smooth-sailing, except for the usual traffic lights. But as soon as one descends from the last flyover toward the vicinity of the City of Dreams, a bumper-to-bumper scenario meets him with a vengeance. Jeepneys and buses occupy practically all lanes as their drivers compete for passengers and run idle side by side in the middle of the highway. There is total chaos there even if a police outpost is just a stone’s throw away.
Does President Duterte really need “emergency powers” (of all things in this drug-crazed archipelago) to kick the butts of those jeepney and bus drivers—and, most urgently, of those do-nothing doofuses at the MMDA whose primary job is to keep the President from having to worry about traffic in Metro Manila?
STEPHEN L. MONSANTO,Loyola Heights, Quezon City