Thomas M. Orbos

Land emancipation was the battle cry of many revolutions in the past two to three centuries. From lands across Europe to the Americas and in Asia to include our country, it was agrarian reform or the emancipation of the masses from the hold of the landowners whose lands they toiled for generations that brought about many a nation’s journey to democratic change and economic development. And while we have achieved much progress in freeing our farmers from land slavery, there appears to be another platform of societal disparity that is now heavily burdening the greater majority of our people.

What I consider was a good initiative from my predecessor when I was still in government was the MMDA Worker’s Inn. Operating as a low-priced lodging facility, it was a self-sustaining project with its occupancy at any given time close to 100 percent. Priced at P100 per night at that time, it was a no-frills dorm type set-up with no air-conditioning and with spartan facilities. But patrons never complained.  Rather than spending 30 percent of their wages on the daily 4-5-hour public transport commute from their homes in Cavite, Laguna or Bulacan, they would stay at the inn for the workweek and go home during the weekends. This resulted in substantial savings for the workers, not to mention the quality work time they provide to their employers in Metro Manila. It was a good project with lots of benefits. Unfortunately, I found out that the program was discontinued sometime after I left the agency.

California, the great American state of freeways, made a historic turnaround last week with its decision to ban the sale of gas-fed cars by 2035. This is expected to trigger a domino effect on other US states, as well as other countries and will result in the hastened pace of the evolution of non-carbon transport and an environment friendly transport infrastructure.

Two street related events made headlines recently. One is the No-Contact Apprehension Program (NCAP) now being implemented in several Metro Manila cities and is being met with complaints especially from the public transport groups. The other one is the proposed “No Garage-No Vehicle” bill coming from the House of Representatives. Both programs definitely are alleviation measures to our present transport situation, but honestly both of these would need a second pass and might need some implementation and orientation re-alignments. Sometimes good intentions are not enough but rather an honest in-depth dive into the hearts and minds of the constituents they do want to help must also be in order.

They say that the roads are a microcosm of the state of a society, a culture, and a nation. I was in Jakarta last week and I must say that their roads, the motorists and the commuters there generally reflect their state of well-being. As we are now in the midst of a transport crisis, one can only begin to envy our neighbors and wonder why, despite our cultural and social similarities, our situation is vastly so different from theirs. It would do well for us to once in a while take a glimpse and learn from our Asian neighbors.

The opening of full face-to-face classes in August will put much stress on our already burdened transport situation. With a pandemic-diminished public transport fleet, further affected by the current fuel hikes, the influx of more than 27 million students (3 million in Metro Manila alone) will require not just boxful of attention from our government but also out-of-the-box solutions as well. What happens when there is a shortage that needs to be addressed immediately and there are no supplies that can suffice in the short term?  Rationing.

AS if we don’t have enough problems already, but now we are suddenly subjected to a barrage of SMS spam messages ranging from job offers, selling of items at super-low prices, to winning lotteries we know we did not join. Irritating, indeed, and we dismiss them as today’s version of yesterday’s telemarketing nuisance, testing our patience and always eating up our mobile data space. However, unlike phone marketeers in the past, this digital invasion goes beyond just aggressive selling. Most of these spam messages are phishing activities that attempt to access our personal identification, which then can be exploited by cybercriminals to include our bank details, credit cards and our financial history. We now ask—how did these senders of spam messages get our mobile phone information? Is this just simply random and sporadic? And what have the telecoms companies done to combat this? What about the government agencies tasked to regulate the digital highway and guarantee our digital privacy, in particular the National Telecommunications Commission and the National Privacy Commission?

Last week saw the demise of the Metro Manila BRT Line 1 project after the World Bank granted the Philippine government’s request to cancel its loan agreement amounting to $64 million. This is unfortunate considering that the BRT project could have greatly alleviated our current transport crisis in Metro Manila, especially in the perennial bottleneck of a corridor that is Quezon Avenue-España Boulevard, connecting the two most populated cities of Quezon City and Manila. The BRT project was projected to shelve half the present travel time from the two city halls of Manila and Quezon City, with a projected ridership of 300,000 passengers per day. This would practically almost equal the same ridership as that of the Metro Manila subway (370,000), which costs a staggering 100 plus times more ($7 billion).  Unfortunate because the cancellation could have been avoided.

Incoming President Marcos’ choice of Jaime “Jimmy” Bautista to head the DOTr comes at a time when Filipino commuters are experiencing myriad of transport issues.

I write again about the 15-minute city urban development concept as I firmly believe that this is the way for cities to survive and sustainably deal with problems such as traffic congestion, pollution, rising costs of deliveries of goods and services, and the declining general health of the population, among others. Adoption of this concept becomes even more practical in times of crisis or calamity, such as the current pandemic when we were all forced into lockdowns. Even more relevant is how this concept will help mitigate our current transport situation, which is greatly threatened by the spiraling prices of gasoline. With our mobility affected, we will be dependent all the more on our communities—hence the 15-minute city concept coming into play.

IN a move that pleasantly caught many by surprise and contrary to his campaign rhetoric, President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has vowed to assert the territorial rights of the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea. With this, the President-elect has that opportunity in his hands to immediately establish that he is different from his predecessor in the critical areas of foreign policy and maritime security. This was the assessment of experts during a virtual town hall discussion organized by top think tank Stratbase ADR Institute.

Among the four modes of transportation—air, land, maritime and rail—that are under the purview of the Transportation department, the land transport or the road sector is considered as the most complex in terms of the challenges that it presents. This does not mean that the other modes of transport are less complex or less important. In fact, they require more specialized planning and budgets given the infrastructural requirements (ports, airports, rail networks), but managing  these sectors  is not as challenging as that of the road sector.  And if there is one area that the government   has neglected, admittedly it is the road sector.

Now that we have Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as our incoming president, we all need to end our partisan political engagement and go back to being citizens of the republic. The government needs all hands on deck, especially with our ship Philippines facing such stormy seas up ahead. And all of us, regardless of political color, need to do our part in the democratic process that we promised to uphold. In this journey our country is now in, let us not be barriers but rather guardrails to ensure that we are on the right track.

For us Metro Manilans, it is obvious that the dreaded Metro Manila traffic has reared its ugly head once more, though not as bad and worrisome as before. In a way, it is a good sign that the capital region is back on its feet, after the two-year pandemic hiatus, but the thought of going back to those days when traversing Edsa would take hours would give the new administration, especially our new set of transport and traffic managers, its work cut out when they take over. My unsolicited advice—no need  to re-implement the United Vehicle Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP) or more commonly known as the “number coding” scheme.

Can surveys be manipulated, tweaked or bought? Such a question, given the importance of surveys or political opinion polls in our electoral processes, needs to be brought out in open discussion and maybe later for serious consideration for the government to regulate or at least ensure the total integrity of a mechanism that apparently can dictate a country’s future.

There is hope in the Filipino. I say this to myself, having witnessed the genuine show of support of many, when I attended the birthday rally of Vice President Leni Robredo last Saturday. It is selfless giving and positive volunteerism that I have not seen in my lifetime.

There’s a fairly heated discussion in the public transport sector about a proposal to re-allow provincial buses to enter Metro Manila. With the pandemic almost over, provincial commute has returned close to its pre-Covid situation, with much of the provincial routes resuming and a 100 percent passenger capacity now allowed. There is, however, one stark difference—there is now a need for the these buses to utilize the government mandated provincial terminals at both ends of Metro Manila, namely the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange for the South/Southwest corridor and the North Luzon Express Terminal for the North corridor.

The Ukrainian crisis has only highlighted the global dependence on fossil fuel. With Russia controlling close to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply plus the apparent lukewarm response of the other oil-producing nations to stabilize the market, global price of oil has skyrocketed and is affecting all economies. Immediately following suit are the increases in logistics and transport costs, as well as in prime commodities and services, which will then have a tremendous impact on the purchasing power of the individual. Bracing for the worse is a given. And while we need to address this situation head on, we also need to fast track our timelines in drastically reducing such global vulnerability and our shift to renewable energy and low carbon initiatives. Otherwise, similar occurrence of the Ukrainian crisis will happen again and again. Global fossil fuel addiction must stop and it should involve collective policy actions from governments but with us individuals as well.

Because of the pandemic, the so-called 15-minute city model that is trending in many urban centers globally has become more relevant. This model revolves around the idea that communities are set up in such a way that residents have all the goods and services that they need—groceries, schools, church, clinics, park, etc.—within 15 minutes of walking and cycling. Traffic congestion and pollution are lessened, while the quality of life improves. Pandemic lockdowns made the need to have all our necessities within reach plausible. Cities needed to be independently resilient in order to survive.

IT was around this time last year that I wrote about our country’s search for the next president, likening the Philippines to a ship on a perilous journey. What are the necessary traits of a good captain or a president that would assure us of not just a chance of survival but a better future for our children and us?