Forward!

From a driver-only car ban to an additional lane without widening EDSA, the series of brain-fracking by government officials to solve EDSA traffic made them like Bird Box characters who groped in an ocean of solutions yet elected to get trapped in a dome of more blind people.

These are patch-up remedies no different from the odd-even scheme in effect since 1995 and the sprouting of flyovers that are merely gigantic road humps which, instead of slowing down vehicle flow for safety, only quickened the buildup at their feet and stole space from what were otherwise large avenues.

Add to them the train systems which denied other land vehicles of lanes and what we have now is chaos at most times of the day.

We can no longer fault past administrations or the present. We learned to live with what we have.

We have accepted that a three-hour drive to our workplaces and another three going home are parts of our lives. It is not healthy and productive, but we have to accept and live with it.

But not if there are solutions. The alternatives are costly, however, and money will be an issue for a still rising country like ours. But we need to invest in our future and road infrastructure has to rise if we do not to like to still get stuck in the 1980s or the dome for the blind.

In a recent Daily Tribune exclusive interview, reelectionist Sen. JV Ejercito sees investing in more road infrastructure as the one of the most viable solutions to Metro Manila traffic. More roads have to be built, roads that lead away and to the metropolis, wider roads that can accommodate more vehicles, more train systems that can handle the country’s growing population, more and more and more.

Because we could not survive with less. And less is what we have now.

Philippine population in 1986 was at about 56 million. That was a year when change was expected following the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino was the new hope. It was also the year when all the decay left by the past dispensation was started to be felt by the people, including horrendous traffic in EDSA – posterized for its unmoving red tail lights, which Cory’s bright boys thought would move if they constructed flyovers.

The late Dodo Ayuyao, former president of the Philippine Motor Association, which later became the Automotive Association of the Philippines, predicted long ago our present predicament with our roads. Ayuyao said the flyovers were not the solutions. He was right – they added to the buildup, instead, both on their sides and at their landings. He was a proponent of public transport system, which, when he was living, was still limited to the jeepney, bus and the now antiquated Light Rail Transit.

A longer Metro Rail Transit system soon rose to take the excess of commuters off EDSA. But Philippine population soon doubled from that of 1986. As of this writing, the Philippines is populated by 107,347,445 people, equivalent to 1.4 percent of the world population. We only have 298,170 square kilometers to live in and move about.

EDSA hosts nearly half-a-million vehicles daily. We need to abandon EDSA, our private cars and whatever is left of its open spaces to make it breathe.

In about 10 years, traffic will cost us about P6 billion daily, according to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), one of the Philippines’ development partners.

The Duterte leadership is seeing the rise of a golden age of infrastructure. People have yet to feel them, not at this time when construction projects have just been launched. What we encounter now are the congestions that are part of the baby steps. We have to endure all these to grow.

Among the major projects rising are the six-lane P15-billion NLEX Harbor Link Segment 10 connecting MacArthur Highway in Valenzuela City to the C-3 Road in Caloocan City; the P23.302-billion NLEX-SLEX Connector Road expected to be completed by 2021; the P37.43-billion stage 3 of the Metro Manila Skyway expected to be complete this year; the P7.45-billion NLEX Harbor Link Segment 8.2 in Quezon City; the P1.6-billion BGC-Ortigas Center Link for completion next year; the P45-billion Southeast Metro Manila Expressway; and the P36-billion Southeast Metro Manila Expressway.

But apart from these, the public also has to contribute in ensuring better lives for the future generation.

We have to slow down the population boom. Our support to government and the private sector’s birth control programs is crucial to this.

No amount of economic boom could keep up with an exploding population. And remember, we do not have space for more people, unless we have the money to build sky cities for the Jetsons. And we have not mentioned food yet.

Car companies sold nearly half-a-million units last year. These added to the present number of about 11 million vehicles using our limited road networks. While the excise tax imposed on new cars may be helping prospective car owners to reconsider, government should also think about ways to limit private ownership of vehicles and motorcycles in the future. But it has to hasten the construction and improvement of the public transport system first, or nothing gets fixed if it does not. Flood problem should also be addressed.

There should also be a limit to further developments in the shrinking open spaces of Metro Manila. We need not say more about this. The facts are glaring, our experiences with the increased volume of vehicles in these “developed places” have gone nuts.

Our future leaders should learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Cory dropped Marcos’ projects, as FVR did with Cory’s, as Erap did with FVR’s, as GMA did Erap’s, as Noynoy did with GMA’s.

Let us work together. We cannot move on – no, we cannot really move – if we are stuck in traffic.