Last week the Asian Development Bank (ADB) hosted the Asian Transport Forum. A classmate in Japan attended the forum as an official of the government of Lao PDR. He told me that the forum was a good learning experience for him. When I asked him about his observation of the traffic in Metro Manila, he said technical solutions will not be enough, much of it is really political will. After our talk, I drove toward home with political will leaving a mark in my head. I thought we might just pull through with the traffic challenge we are in with an administration with much stronger political will than previous ones.
Nearing 100 days in office, the new administration is still finding ways to respond to the traffic challenge. Much of the solutions seem dependent on having emergency powers. Getting emergency powers is a good response to a challenge of disaster proportions. But with various priorities and hearings in Congress right now, it will take more time before real solutions can be decided using said powers. Meanwhile, we are approaching the busiest season, which will mean more traffic. In the meantime, the government can actually implement some practical measures in preparation for the emergency powers. This can be done by working on the traffic-management aspects.
It can be observed that traffic management in Metropolitan Manila cities is treated like an ordinary work hour. With the exception of major roads and those under the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), most cities’ enforcers start work at 7 a.m. and stop work at 5 p.m. The same goes with their offices in the city halls. Under normal circumstance, this is already unacceptable, what more under a disaster condition. Traffic management is a 24-hour, seven days-a-week task in Metro Manila. City traffic offices and enforcers should work on shifts. Furthermore, the enforcers are not fairly distributed across city roads. It is known that they congregate in places where they can issue more citation tickets. Every driver in Metro Manila knows that, instead of managing traffic, they look for traffic violations. This is because their incentives are based on the commissions they get from traffic citations and violations. This is also where most basic corruption is rampant and is happening in broad daylight. The imbalanced incentive structure is perpetuated by seemingly lack of traffic-management knowledge by those who become enforcers and by those who manage their city offices.
A possible remedy in the future is to use the level of traffic as a measure in the rankings of local governments. In particular, the popular Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index (CMCI) under the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) can adopt one or two indicators on traffic and give more weights than other indicators. The advent of the traffic and GPS applications, such as Waze and Google Maps, can be helpful in determining indicators. For instance, Waze can provide on a monthly basis, which areas of a city is severely congested. A Metro Manila City, with the most congested roads, will get the lowest rank. Similarly, such measurement can be used to balance the existing incentive mechanisms based on traffic citations. A practical solution is to assign teams of enforcers in every major intersection of city road and make the traffic of that intersection their full responsibility. Their incentive commission on traffic citations will only be given to them if the traffic in their assigned location maintains a particular moving speed. If the enforcers concentrate on commissions and their location is marked by the GPS application as congested, they get no incentive commission. If their location is reflecting improvement in traffic flow consistently, then they do not only get the commission but a city traffic-free bonus. This means that the city traffic office need to have a broader, coordinated overall approach in addressing traffic challenges by making them fully responsible for their implementation. Apart from directing and managing traffic, they should also start removing obstructions on the road, such as parked vehicles, street constructions and diggings, illegal structures, among others.
These traffic-management schemes must then be juxtaposed with other critical solutions, such as improvement in public transportation, road expansion and improvements, phasing out of old vehicles, restricting use of roads to only those vehicles paying road users tax as key activities.
In the final analysis, it will all boil down to what my friend calls political will. Political will has cleansed obstructions in Divisoria, but has not been implemented in other key market areas in Metro Manila. Buses still line up both sides of Roxas Boulevard fronting Baclaran Church to get passengers. Political will that people want to see is consistent in implementation, regardless of time and day, and standard in execution, regardless of whether it is a major road.