Traffic, tempers and tantrums

Indulge us a bit of road rage. We’ve decided to surrender and succumb to the tempestuous rage that builds up whenever we hit Metropolitan Manila’s streets. Allow us to hitch a ride on the bandwagon by adding to the congestion of criticism and streetwise analyses rushing in from the commuting public on how to tackle the traffic problem. 

We profess neither expertise nor experience in traffic management, save for the painful education borne out of the daily three to four hour one-way commutes, frayed nerves, fender scrapes and the disgust from witnessing traffic-enforcement dereliction by those motivated more by mulcting and monetary inducements than by discipline and order.

Is it not profoundly warped that, in assigning responsibilities to tackle the problem of traffic enforcement, Benigno Aquino III tasked a notoriously discredited police unit on one end and a serially unproductive factotum on another?

While this consistently panders to the latent paradigm of Aquino’s KKK (Kaklase, Kaibigan and Kabarilan) criteria applied in appointments, the downsides are too numerous as to boggle sanity.

Discern the inanities that congest the official rhetoric surrounding the traffic problem. First, the President hails these gridlocks as signs of economic growth. Huh?

Then his anointed, forgetting to count the yearly P876 billion (P2.4 billion daily) lost to traffic mindlessly parrots the same. Duh?

If this is what is meant by continuity, then intellect seems to be running on fumes.

Unfortunately, to chorus in, as if vehicle occupancy was a major factor of gridlocks, another Cabinet appointee responsible for the inflationary power hikes in Mindanao proposed that most inane of placebos-carpooling. Double duh??

If any thinking was at all applied to the decision to have these characters take the steering wheel, it fell short of exacting accountability from those who’ve previously failed their mandates. Accountability and paying the price for dereliction and failure are requisite in any comprehensive solution, lest we repeat and perpetuate predicate folly and sweep gross ineptitude under a manhole with default “noynoying.”

Essentially, what the authorities now offer as a palliative along Edsa to relieve choke points identified by Aquino was to transfer traffic to the side streets. The Cabinet-level problem-solver then added his knee-jerk and instant analysis by pointing out that traffic violators on those side streets were privately owned vehicles, contrary to the public-transport buses and jeepneys commuters see brazenly violating the law every minute. With his cursory analysis, he virtually parried all accusations of government ineptitude and effectively justified shoveling all prospective enforcement burdens on the private sector.

Let’s validate or invalidate such analysis using a method even illiterates could understand. Lets use pictures.

On September 14, on its front page, the Malaya Business Insight featured a one half-page photograph that was particularly illustrative of over 10 major causes. Against the inane pronouncements of economic growth, vehicle-volume ratios and the blame placed on private motorists, what’s wrong with the picture?

Panning from left to right, the photograph showed illegal structures on a sidewalk. These force pedestrians unto the street.

Cargo trucks occupied the outer lanes all the way to the inner lanes, blocking buses access to the curb. Buses then had to occupy the middle to center lanes to take in and discharge passengers in the middle of the street, as motorcycles squeezed through in-between lanes.

On the center island, uncollected garbage was carelessly strewn.

Overcrowded tricycles and jeepneys with commuters precariously hanging on made illegal U-turns.

Vehicles without license plates plied the streets and a makeshift vulcanizing shop occupied not just the sidewalk but extended way over to the avenue’s second lane from the curb.

With over 10 violations, there was no traffic enforcer in the picture. None of these images reflected vehicle volume to roadway ratios. More important, this is not a picture of progress. It is proof of incompetence.