Curse-laden rants about the traffic gridlock are so normal among Metro Manilans there’s actually no need to formally explore and look for evidence of a crisis on the roads of the metropolis.

In fact, going by the rants alone we can safely conclude that most weren’t shocked when a disinterested Dutch traffic outfit reported that Metro Manila is tops in traffic congestion worldwide.

The rants also mean that everyone has become helplessly numb and dumb to the traffic. Which leads us to suspect that most Metro Manila residents now deeply harbor masochistic symptoms.

This is due to the fact they’ll buy even more vehicles to feed their obsession to inflict even more pain on themselves. The matter of new vehicles and masochism is no joke.

Last week, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. and the Truck Manufacturers Association proudly trumpeted the sale of 429,000 new vehicles last year.

How many of those new vehicles ended up on Metro Manila roads isn’t known. But whatever those numbers are, they presumably do not include the many new motorcycles and unregulated slow-moving E-trikes sold.

At any rate, last year’s record-breaking vehicle sales gob-smacked Senator JV Ejercito last week. So pessimistic is Ejercito about Metro Manila’s congested future, he’s pleading with government to prioritize and fast-track all pending railway projects going in and out of the metropolis.

Still, conservative Ejercito wasn’t bonkers enough to say something dramatic on major policy for temporarily alleviating the traffic like, for instance, a moratorium on new vehicle sales for Metro Manila motorists. Car sales seems to be the elephant in the room nobody wants to touch.

Meanwhile, an altogether curious reaction to the traffic congestion came from Metropolitan Manila Development Authority’s acting chairman Romando Artes, the point man on traffic.

Artes came out swinging, complaining loudly that it was unfair of TomTom Traffic Index to report that of 387 cities across 55 countries, Metro Manila topped the 2023 list with the slowest travel time.

Using global positioning system data to identify when and where there was traffic congestion, the Netherlands-based TomTom reported that on average it takes 25 minutes and 30 seconds to travel 10 kilometers in Metro Manila, or 2.55 minutes per kilometer.

During rush hour on weekdays, it’s even slower, with motorists crawling at an average speed of 19 kilometers per hour, or 3.16 minutes per kilometer.

That was some of the data a visibly agitated Artes questioned, trying to convince anyone who would listen that he knew better about the traffic congestion plaguing the metropolis.

But whether the TomTom index was off the mark or not, Artes was accused of gas-lighting: He conspicuously didn’t have a concrete solution for the traffic mess.

Instead, he merely cited its general causes — like the sheer volume of vehicles, illegal structures, road repairs, road accidents, illegal parking, and driver discipline.

But even in citing the causes Aretes failed. He omitted one obvious cause — the lack of coordinated traffic management and disciplined enforcement throughout Metro Manila’s cities.

Here, Artes can’t be fully blamed. He can only do so much when his agency has limited manpower and resources as he navigates the fiefdoms of Metro Manila’s various mayors to try and convince them to do their fair share in resolving the metropolis’s interconnected traffic woes.

In my part of the metropolis (the south), for instance, Pasay City stands out for its evident cavalier attitude toward traffic management and enforcement, notably the crucial traffic chokepoint, the EDSA-Taft intersection.

On any given day the EDSA-Taft intersection, in the vicinity of MRT I’s last station, is a chaotic scene of cars, buses, trailer trucks, jeepneys, tricycles, TokToks, pedestrians, with hardly any traffic enforcers in sight.

Yet, for decades no one has stepped up to the challenge of finding a lasting solution to the gridlock at that particular intersection which affects the traffic up and down EDSA.

Such then did another week pass without resolving Metro Manila’s soul-robbing traffic.