‘… that honest-to-goodness assessment may require real political will and balls of steel — because they may mean phasing out inefficient modes of public transport and replacing them with better options…’
AS if rising rice prices weren’t enough to raise peoples’ blood pressure, traffic is back on the streets of Metro Manila, to think that the Christmas rush ain’t here yet.
I rarely venture out of BGC which is (conveniently) where I both work and live, and so on those rare occasions that I do venture out, I rely heavily on Waze to find me the route that will get me to my destination fastest.
And that route isn’t necessarily the shortest, distance-wise.
Like yesterday, to get from BGC to Alba’s on Tomas Morato, I ended up passing through some of the narrowest streets of Mandaluyong, at times driving parallel to the Pasig River through densely populated areas that I had never passed through before. All the while I encountered tricycles and jeepneys, and buses on main thoroughfares. But mostly there were cars and sub-SUVs and SUVS left and right, carrying one or more passengers from point A to point B.
Made me realize one thing — our public transport system is a shifty one and because it is so unreliable as a system, those who can afford or buy their own vehicles — and in the main that’s why you have traffic jams almost all throughout the year.
Traffic is all about moving people. The better we move people around, the less traffic there is on the ground (think Singapore). The poorer we are at moving people around…
No street widening will ever work because all that encourages is more private vehicles.
Instead of street widening, what is needed is an honest-to-goodness assessment of the public transport system and its ability to bring a person from point A to point B, no matter where he or she lives. But that honest-to-goodness assessment may require real political will and balls of steel — because they may mean phasing out inefficient modes of public transport and replacing them with better options that carry more people more efficiently.
(Yes, I mean less tricycles and carbon monoxide-emitting diesel-fueled jeepneys.)
This brings me to a final point: I’ve always seen traffic flow as akin to blood flow, with heavy traffic areas as areas needing (OMG) a bypass or a stent. And that’s why I’ve always said that we need a cardiologist as a traffic manager, not a civil engineer or worse a politician. Let the cardiologist analyze the “blood flow” and decide what best to do to get that blood flowing freely.
Maybe we will end up moving people much better that way!
