Heaven can wait, commuters can’t

Tugade said they will cut the tedious lawmaking process and give immediate policy direction that will require amendments to existing laws and ordinances.

Is there somebody else more popish than Poe?

If we are to follow Sen. Grace Poe’s logic in her refusal to grant emergency powers to the President in solving Metro Manila’s traffic woes, nothing else in this government is going to move.

Projects meant to alleviate the plight of the common tao are bound to be rejected for the simple fear that funds will be lost to corruption.

She can say all the reasons she wants to explain her reluctance, but the fact remains that every minute that such projects are delayed, the longer the suffering of Juan de la Cruz will be.

Meantime, the vehicular anarchy that is EDSA looks like a cancer metastasizing to other parts of the metropolis, to the chagrin of the commuters.

These are but few of the words commuters use to describe traffic in Metro Manila, particularly that long stretch of vehicular anarchy that is EDSA.

And lately, sad to say, we could add that dreaded word, fatal.

Yes, traffic in Metro Manila has become that bad that it has come to a point where you could die while being wheeled by an ambulance that cannot even have enough breathing space in traffic.

Inch by inch, bit by bit, your chance of survival rests not on the medics, but on how lucky you could squeeze through what we now call “carmageddon.”

That incident where a patient failed to even reach the hospital after the ambulance he was in figured in a collision somewhere in Quezon City is a case in point. How many more emergencies like that would occur before we wake up to the realization that traffic in the metro is bound to get worse before it could get better?

How many billions more should we lose a day before we act with dispatch and that sense of urgency is knocked in our heads?

It’s not even the holiday season yet, but already traffic has become so bad commuters have to get off from buses even without reaching their destinations because it has come to a standstill.

Stories of how the public would spend hours and hours commuting to and from work and being deprived of quality time with their families abound in social media. Memes about traffic have become commonplace.

While various schemes have been and are being tried, it seems the only way to solve the situation is to come up with drastic measures and infrastructure. Normal solutions have been tried to no avail. That is probably the reason President Duterte wanted to avail of emergency measures to help cope with the situation.

It’s like a state of emergency or state of calamity being declared in an area heavily devastated by a typhoon. In other words, urgent measures have to made.

And that’s exactly what the Department of Transportation (DoTr) headed by Arthur Tugade wants to do. He needs emergency powers to go around the bureaucracy in such issues as right-of-way.

When the DoTr Secretary faced the Senate Committee on Public Services early this week to ask anew for such powers after being turned down earlier in President Duterte’s term, he explained that the emergency powers they are asking for will be applied only for a certain period of time and will not be absolute, assuring that Congress will still have the oversight of its implementation and the Supreme Court will still have the authority to review all its legal implications.

Asked on why he needs such powers, Tugade said they will cut the tedious lawmaking process and give immediate policy direction that will require amendments to existing laws and ordinances.

They will also fast-track the procurement and acquisition of right-of-way, and will also implement the high priority projects immediately.

“If we will think of it and we will look back at the past, if they gave the emergency powers before, by now, we should be reviewing what we are supposed to finish,” Tugade told Poe.

Despite all the assurances, the feisty senator remained unconvinced, pointing out that there are certain provisions on the proposal that should not be considered as emergency powers.

So disappointed was President Duterte with Poe’s reluctance, he had given up on easing the traffic gridlock in the capital region, saying that whatever happens now can be blamed on the lady she describes as holier than thou.

“It would be her legacy,” the President said.