‘In my book, it’s the travel by sea that is the most problematic and the least improved over the last few decades.’
THE Philippines, being an archipelagic country, faces logistical problems in relation to getting people and goods moving around.
There’s the problem of movement by land. Our islands require hundreds of thousands of kilometers of roadway to get people from point A to point Z, from the northernmost reaches of Aparri in Luzon to the southernmost reaches of the Davao provinces. The Pan-Philippine Highway, for a while called the Maharlika Highway, is the main backbone of land transportation in our islands and in some portions such as the Lingayen-Lucena corridor, there have been major improvements in the last two decades or so. But deviate a little from the main urban centers and heavily-populated LGUs and it will seem like time has stood still when it comes to road networks.
Even where there has been some sort of progress, there are still head-scratching issues like trees and electric posts smack in the middle of additional lanes. As if there is no coordination whatsoever among government agencies and between these agencies and the private sector.
I need not dwell anymore on the horrendous traffic that marks life in most of our urban centers. Or to emphasize that we are building our mass transit systems in Metro Manila about 20 years behind schedule while nothing is being done at all in any of the other metropolitan areas outside of the NCR.
In the area of air transport, our airline companies have greatly improved in terms of equipment and reach. Competition has its benefits and so the end of the PAL monopoly as a government-owned corporation ushered in a new era for air travel. It’s our airports that have been left behind, although a number of the bigger ones (notable among them Clark and Cebu) are proof that there’s hope.
But only, I guess, if the government gets out of the way.
In my book, it’s the travel by sea that is the most problematic and the least improved over the last few decades. And this is unfortunate for a country like the Philippines, which is a string of islands. It takes two days (I think) to travel by boat from Manila to Puerto Princesa, maybe a little faster going to Cebu.
