Dead-end strategy

Despite the massive infrastructure buildup since the previous administration, which was budgeted at P1.5 trillion a year and mostly poured into road projects in Metro Manila, the vehicle traffic situation has worsened over the years.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) recently reported that the revised Build Better More list of flagship projects—a substantial portion for building roads—now includes 185 contracts worth P9.14 trillion.

The Department of Public Works and Highways said that from July 2022 to May 2023, 4,082 kilometers of roads and 497 bridges were either built, maintained, widened, upgraded, or rehabilitated.

Despite landmark infrastructure like the Skyway in Metro Manila — which motorists complain charges very high fees compared to other tollways — the capital city has not shaken off its notoriety as the Carmageddon capital of the world.

According to research conducted by the House of Representatives think tank Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department, Metro Manila has the worst traffic congestion among urban areas in the world.

It cited the 2023 TomTom Traffic Index, which showed that of 387 cities across 55 countries, Metro Manila registered the longest average travel time to traverse a 10-kilometer route – the distance between Cubao, Quezon City, and Makati, at 25 minutes, and 30 seconds.

The research indicated that other metro areas that approximated Metro Manila’s traffic congestion were Lima (Peru), Bengaluru (India), Sapporo (Japan), and Bogota (Colombia).

Instead of improving with the road projects, TomTom data showed that traffic jams in Metro Manila had gotten worse. In 2023, Filipinos lost up to 117 hours, equivalent to 4 days and 21 hours, due to congestion, or 12 hours and 51 minutes more than the average time lost in 2022.

In a 2018 study, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) estimated the economic losses from traffic jams to be P3.5 billion daily.

That was when the various mega road projects were still being built.

Traffic experts are convinced that building too many roads may look impressive, but they do little to speed up city travel.

The explanation is that building new roads encourages people to buy more vehicles, which economists term induced demand.

The concept is described as when the supply of something (like roads) increases, people tend to want that thing even more.

According to social scientists, data has shown this happens frequently when new roads are built.

Such findings indicate that the traditional ways of addressing the traffic problem are essentially futile.

Economists Matthew Turner of the University of Toronto and Gilles Duranton of the University of Pennsylvania, in a 2019 research study, compared the number of new roads and highways built in different US cities between 1980 and 2000 and the total number of miles driven.

If a city increased its road capacity by 10 percent between 1980 and 1990, driving in that city went up by 10 percent. If the number of roads in the same city increased by 11 percent between 1990 and 2000, the total number of miles driven also increased by 11 percent. It’s like the two figures were moving in perfect lockstep, changing at the same rate, the study said.

The research results showed that roads will never match the desire of increasingly affluent Filipinos to buy personal vehicles.

A new paradigm should be introduced to temper the tendency to purchase new vehicles, such as requiring, as in other countries, that each vehicle purchased has a garage.

More toll roads benefit the private groups that manage them most, but not the majority of motorists and commuters who have to live within a meager transportation budget.

Car makers encourage such a track to solve the traffic problem for obvious reasons.