IN the early part of his term, President Rodrigo Duterte boasted that he could solve the Metro Manila traffic in three months. With only a month remaining before he steps down, Edsa—the most congested road artery in Metro Manila—remains to be just that.
The usually horrific metro traffic situation only got a fleeting respite when Covid-19 lockdowns decongested Edsa of vehicles. As health restrictions began easing up to pave the way for the reopening of more businesses, traffic went back to “hellish normal” along this 23.8-kilometer circumferential road.
Edsa or Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, known in the 1950s as Highway 54, connects the northern and southern part of the metro, as well as South Luzon and North Luzon. In the late 1980s, after the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolt, and through the 1990s, construction boomed in the metro. What used to be enjoyable travel along Edsa faded, as malls, residential subdivisions, and office buildings began sprouting on big vacant lots. Nightmarish traffic snarls particularly became rampant.
At first, many public officials held the myopic view that the burgeoning vehicle congestion was a sign of progress. But as metro traffic increasingly put a dent in the country’s economy and frayed the nerves of motorists and commuters alike, several schemes to decongest Edsa were carried out, mostly to no avail.
According to a study done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Philippines is in great danger of losing P5.4 billion daily by 2035 if traffic congestion remains unchecked. JICA’s previous estimate placed the daily losses caused by traffic congestion at P3.5 billion. The updated record comes from JICA’s 2017 “Follow Up Survey on the Roadmap for Transport Infrastructure Development for Greater Capital Region.”
To be fair, every administration has made the effort to decongest Edsa. President Corazon Aquino’s transport secretary Oscar Orbos instituted the yellow-lane scheme, where the two outermost lanes of four- to six-lane roads were allotted for public utility vehicles, mostly buses. Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) executive director Col. Romeo Maganto during President Fidel Ramos’s term developed in 1995 the number or color coding system, initially targeting public utility vehicles and later expanding to all vehicles plying Edsa where traffic congestion in Metro Manila was at its heaviest. Vehicles covered under the original Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program were banned from Edsa for the entire day based on the last digit of a vehicle’s license plate, similar to the current UVVRP. Since then, nothing has seemed to work in the long term, unfortunately.
In 2019, Manila was dubbed the most congested city by both the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the TomTom Traffic Index. Now, the MMDA wants to discuss with stakeholders two number coding schemes, which will ban vehicles from public roads during rush hours on two weekdays in a bid to reduce heavy traffic in Metro Manila.
MMDA Chairman Romando Artes said the first scheme aims to cut down traffic by 50 percent. It will ban vehicles having registration plates with odd last numbers—1, 3, 5, 7, 9—on Monday and Thursday from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m. and from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Vehicles with registration plates ending in even numbers—2, 4, 6, 8, 0—will be banned from public roads on Tuesday and Friday during the same hours. On Wednesdays, all vehicles will be allowed to use public roads. I will spare you the details of the second scheme because this proposal seems to just rehash in a confusing way the mechanics of the first scheme. Suffice it to say that this scheme aims to cut down traffic by 40 percent.
Artes said that recent data show that 60 to 70 percent of the 300,000 vehicles sold in the country in 2021 enter Metro Manila. Traffic demand in the metro, Philkotse.com reports, is around 12.8 million trips. While 69 percent of that is made using available public transportation like jeepneys, buses, the LRT and the MRT, a significantly lower portion is done through driving or riding private vehicles. And yet, the private mode of transport is said to occupy 78 percent of road space.
Why is there traffic congestion? When demand for a road space becomes greater than what is available, traffic snarls occur. People who live far from their workplace will take up road space when they travel to and from Metro Manila, where many corporations are centered in a number of locations within urban settings, such as Bonifacio Global City, Ortigas CBD, Makati Business Center (Ayala), Rockwell Center, Alabang, Pasay, and Triangle Park in Quezon City. In other parts of the Philippines, the same problem occurs in Metro Davao and Metro Cebu.
Edsa and other metro roads, adds Philkotse.com, are a perfect example of “the tragedy of the commons” because they are free to use. Hence, there is little incentive for people who own cars not to “use the hell out of it.”
Anthony Downs, an economist, says rush hour traffic congestion is unavoidable. “It is the direct consequence of having the standard work schedule that we all know too well.” When roads are treated like goods in a capitalist country that can be had either by paying a fee or on a first-come first-serviced policy, Downs explains, traffic congestion becomes “akin to the latter.” Sad to say that on Edsa, rush hour is all-day-long, except for maybe the wee hours of the morning.
Are road widening and building auxiliary expressways the answer? According to researchers from London School of Economics and University of Toronto, there exists a fundamental law of road congestion: building and widening new roads will also cause traffic density to rise up again to previous levels. They determined the number of vehicle-kilometers traveled and saw a proportionate increase to the lane-kilometers available on roads.
Several administrations have shown how band-aid or short-term solutions do not work for the gargantuan and complex problem that is Edsa traffic. It is true that decreasing the volume of vehicles crisscrossing Edsa’s asphalt surface daily is key. Implementing number-coding schemes to reduce the number of private vehicles using it, banning provincial buses, or even making sections of Edsa one-way lanes, are not enough. Coding schemes will just push rich motorists to buy more cars. The provincial bus ban has only encouraged more colorum conveyances to take over. Making Edsa a one-way road seems like an overreach that someone with a hangover must have dreamed of.
With the Duterte administration on its last few weeks in power, it has no more time left to implement a viable and effective traffic scheme to ease the hardship of motorists and commuters. The next administration must use its six-year term to exercise its political will in improving roads and road network. We simply don’t have enough roads for vehicles, and it’s not getting any better. Records show that in Metro Manila, the current ratio is at 1 km of road for every 424 vehicles. In Cebu, road expansions are costing the provincial government P1.1 billion in daily losses. Also urban planning problems must be fully addressed. For instance, Metro Manila, Cebu, and even the relatively smaller city of Cagayan de Oro lacked foresight when it comes to urban planning. The existing urban layout failed to take into consideration the sudden population growth especially in areas that experience transient populations, or those who don’t necessarily live there but work in the area on a daily basis.
Most importantly, encouraging car riders to use public transportation must be a top priority. Of course, this will be possible if and only when the public will be provided with a much-awaited and long-desired efficient, economical, and reliable mass transportation system.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com