Duterte: Traffic problem to get worse before it becomes better

The traffic situation in Metro Manila and other urban centers will get worse before it becomes bet­ter, as the government em­barks on massive projects to improve travel among key cities, President Duterte said.

Mr. Duterte has ap­pealed to the public for more understanding as big-ticket projects under the govern­ment’s “Build, Build, Build” program are expected to worsen the traffic congestion in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

”I have to remind you that there will be a lot of projects on the streets. There will also be commotion and sometimes derailment of the traffic situation,” Mr. Duterte said upon his arrival from a two-day visit in Malaysia on Thursday night at the Davao International Airport.

”But I said that it’s just an appeal and warn­ing to people who contin­ue to complain. But then…there is (nothing) free here. There’s always a drawback,” he added.

Big-ticket projects

Last week, top government officials led by Public Works and Highway Secretary Mark Villar and Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade announced big-ticket proj­ects that would create more jobs and bolster economic growth.

”A lot of projects are on deck. So I would say that it would keep our country busy in the coming months,” the President said.

Under the “Build, Build, Build: The Duterte Adminis­tration’s Infrastructure Plan,” the big-ticket infrastructure projects inside and outside Metro Manila include rail­ways, urban mass transport, airports and seaports, roads and bridges, and the devel­opment of alternative cities.

The projects that are expected to affect traffic in Metro Manila are the Met­ro Manila Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)System along Epifa­nio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA); Metro Manila-Clark Railway; Santa Monica-Law­ton-BGC Viaduct; BGC to NAIA Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System; Metro Manila Flood Management Project; UP-Miriam-Ateneo Viaduct; and, North Luzon Express­way-South Luzon Express­way (NLEX-SLEX) Connec­tor Road.

Outside Metro Manila, big projects include Iloi­lo-Guimaras-Negros-Cebu Link Bridge; Davao City By­pass Construction Project; Mindanao Railway; Regional Airport Development; Roll on/Roll off (RORO) Ports Development; Clark Interna­tional Airport New Terminal Building; Clark Green City; and Subic-Clark Cargo Rail­way Project.

Seven more projects to be approve

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Eco­nomic and Development Au­thority (Neda) Director-Gen­eral Ernesto Pernia said the Neda Board is set to approve seven more projects.

These include one agri­culture project in the Cor­dillera Administrative Re­gion (CAR) and another two in Mindanao; South Line Rail Projects from Manila to Sorsogon; widening of the nine-kilometer Tutuban to Valenzuela City road; road improvement project from Valenzuela City to Quezon City; and another road proj­ect going to the north apart from the North Luzon Ex­pressway.

Pernia said 5.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) will go to infrastruc­ture spending in 2017, the highest GDP infra spending in five decades.

2017 infrastructure expenditures

Pernia said they are hoping to finish the infrastructure projects in three to five years.

The government plans to spend P8.2 trillion to build new roads, bridges and trans­port facilities for the next six years as it promises a ‘golden age of infrastructure devel­opment’ for the Philippines.

The infrastructure spending would reach 5.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for next year alone compared with the previous adminis­trations that allocated an av­erage of 2.6 percent of GDP to infrastructure in the last 50 years.

“Our battlecry is build, build, build infrastructure. We have to build infrastruc­ture because common sense will tell you that it is the in­frastructure that will do the connectivity and mobility,” Transportation Secretary Ar­thur Tugade said

“Connectivity and mo­bility will spell and will serve as the ground fundamentals for you to develop and grow,” Tugade reiterated.

Philippines underspent infrastructure

International organizations have cited underspending in infrastructure as one of the reasons the Philippines has not caught up with its neighboring countries in the Southeast and East Asia re­gion.

The International Mon­etary Fund (IMF) said the investment rate in the Phil­ippines is at 21.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, well below regional peers as reflected in low capital stock and infra­structure quality.

According to the IMF, a sustained increase in public infrastructure spending to 5 percent of GDP would add a total of 5 to 6 percent to the country’s GDP after 15 years.

“The thing is we really have to catch up with our neighbors. We have been lag­ging behind our Asian neigh­bors and so the infrastruc­ture deficit is so huge that we really have to double time, triple time to even approach at parity with the infrastruc­ture level of our neighbors in Asia,” Pernia said.

To fast-track the imple­mentation of infrastructure projects, the DoTr has sub­mitted to Congress a pro­posed measure declaring the existence of traffic and con­gestion crisis that will pro­vide the President emergen­cy powers to solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila.

Emergency powers for special procurement

The emergency powers will enable the government to conduct special procure­ment modes for transporta­tion projects such as direct contracting and direct nego­tiation of contracts and will not allow lower courts except the Supreme Court to issue temporary restraining orders (TRO) or preliminary in­junctions that might impede their implementation.

The measure will also transfer the powers and au­thority of agencies such as the Metro Manila Develop­ment Authority (MMDA), Land Transportation Office (LTO), Land Transportation Franchising and Regulato­ry Board (LTFRB), Philip­pine National Police (PNP), among others, to the DOTR and appointment of the DOTr secretary as Traffic Cri­sis Manager that will exercise overall traffic management and the implementation of a comprehensive decongestion and transportation network plan.

“We need the emergency powers to expedite the im­plementation of projects. If the powers will not be grant­ed, we will still implement them. But there will be de­lays. Is the population willing to wait some more? We are only asking for a two year window. We are not asking for emergency powers for the next five years. Two years,” Tugade said.

Formation of an oversight committee

Tugade assured the public of the formation of an over­sight committee consisting of members of Congress to ensure that the projects will be aboveboard.

Concerned stakeholders will be able to monitor the status of projects as the gov­ernment will set up a free­dom of information portal that will ensure transparency and accountability.

The DoTr believes that the establishment of growth centers in various parts of the country will also help de­congest traffic in Metro Ma­nila.

The Clark Green City which is managed by the BCDA is being envisioned as a business, government and academic district in Central Luzon and will become first of the new cities in the coun­try.

Moreover, the Clark In­ternational Airport is being promoted as an alternative international gateway in place of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) which has been experiencing congestion in its runways. A number of airlines have al­ready transferred their flights to the airport.

Manila-Clark Railway

Other projects in the pipeline include the Manila-Clark Railway which will reduce travel time from Metro Ma­nila to Clark International Airport by an hour; Subic-Clark Cargo Railway Project connecting the Subic port and Clark Airport to lessen cargo trucks plying along Metro Manila; Mindanao Railway; and development of roll-on roll-off (RoRo) ports and regional airports.

Improvement of Public-transportation

For his part, DoTr Assistant Secretary for Land Transpor­tation Mark de Leon stated that public transportation should be improved as traffic congestion is caused by the increasing number of private vehicles in major thorough­fares such as EDSA.

“We need to improve public transport in order to reduce car usage,” the trans­portation official stressed in an interview.

The DoTr intends to establish a bus rapid tran­sit (BRT) system within an EDSA route of 48.6 kilome­ters covering Monumento up to Diosdado Macapagal Avenue/Roxas Boulevard, with integrated routes be­tween the Ortigas Business District, Bonifacio Global City, and the Makati Busi­ness District to provide al­ternate mass transit in Metro Manila. It is also planned to link with the NAIA termi­nals and include off-corri­dors to the target Integrated Transport System (ITS) ter­minals in the North, South and Southwest of Metro Manila, and in the vicinity of SM Fairview.

Additional P2P routes to be launched

The department will soon launch additional routes for premium point to point bus (P2P) service in Santolan to Cogeo, Santolan to Tanay, and Santolan to Cainta.

The P2P bus service allows shorter travel time to commuters as buses de­part on a fixed schedule and travel directly from the ter­minal to the drop-off point.

The P2P buses are cur­rently operating in the fol­lowing routes: Trinoma to Glorietta 5; Alabang Town Center to Greenbelt 1; SM North EDSA to SM Me­gamall; Robinson’s Galleria to Park Square and Fairview to Makati. It is also operat­ing 24 hours in the routes of SM North EDSA to SM Megamall and Trinoma to Glorietta 5.

ITS project to ease traffic flow

The ITS project is intend­ed to improve traffic flow through vehicular volume reduction along Metro Ma­nila’s major thoroughfares by eliminating provincial bus traffic on designated points.

The system will estab­lish three mass intermodal terminals at the outskirts of Metro Manila—one north of EDSA, serving passengers to and from Northern Luzon; and two in the south, serving passengers to and from La­guna/Batangas side and those to and from Cavite side. The terminals will connect pas­sengers from the province to other urban transport sys­tems—railway, city bus, taxi and PUV-serving inner Met­ro Manila. The DOTr will be also expanding the LRT and MRT railway systems as part of long term solutions in ad­dressing the traffic situation.

The House of Represen­tatives is aiming to pass by yearend its own proposal to grant the President emergen­cy powers to deal with the traffic congestion in Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao City.

Catanduanes Rep. Cesar Sarmiento, chairman of the House transportation com­mittee, stated that the powers will be only limited to land transportation. It authorizes the DOTr Secretary to be in charge of coordinating and lay­ing down a traffic management plan and compel the govern­ment to provide information on transportation projects.

“We are aiming for an ide­al transportation system in the country which is sustainable, organized, predictable and safe,” Sarmiento said in his ad­dress at the first ICT summit on implementing ICT-based solutions to mitigate traffic congestion nationwide held in Makati Shangrila earlier this week.

Among the suggestions of the Committee include the Issuance of Vehicle Plates and Driver’s License Cards; right of way acquisition for LRT Line 1 Cavite Exten­sion in line with Republic Act 10752; improvement of the Southwest Interim Provincial Terminal; and a 3 year route rationalization program.

The committee aims to deal with the effects of imple­menting the emergency pow­ers bill on families and busi­nesses that depend on the transport industry for their livelihood and will consider possible government solu­tions, such as setting up sup­port mechanisms for those who may be displaced. The panel will also focus on the implementation of deconges­tion programs and will ensure coordination of inter-agency offices and local government units (LGU).