No crisis, but critical

“The bitterest of all pills is to reduce the volume of vehicles by streamlining vehicle purchases.

The water divos of the country are issuing appeals to the public to save on water usage because Angat and La Mesa dams are reaching critical levels due to lack of rain.

Of course, we have not reached a water supply crisis yet so far, but the supply levels are critical.

So, what does ‘critical’ mean? It means that the public has to be warned and measures, including drastic ones, should be employed immediately to avert a looming shortage crisis — “critical” is a warning, an orange signal.

Similarly, the traffic situation in the metropolis may not be as urgent as pressing the panic button just yet as some sectors have appealed, but the situation is, indeed, critical. It is a stern warning that the already bad situation could get worse.

Radical measures should be adopted the soonest possible time!

This does not include the presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo’s accepting the challenge of the Bayan group to commute to Malacañang, neither is Panelo’s counsel to leave home early to avoid the monstrous traffic nor the rash suggestion that all government employees to go public rides on Mondays and miss their opening flag ceremonies.

Measures such as cancelling toll fees, allowing motorbikes below 400cc to ply expressways, making Edsa a one-way passage or limited to public transport alone, among other proposals, are up in the air.

There are actual workable and effective solutions yet the pills are so bitter for anyone to swallow.

Time and again, the solution rests not on traffic enforcers or the schemes such as color coding system, the installation of Mabuhay lanes, the clearing operations of the streets from traffic obstructions, strict implementation of Yellow lanes, or the assignment of more enforcers including the Highway Patrol Group, MMDA, DPOS and barangay traffic assistants.

It has always been the heightened volume of vehicles routing the streets that is clearly the culprit.

It is but common sense to train drastic measures towards vehicular volume reduction. Color coding twice a week could help, so is the banning of cars with single persons riding from entering main thoroughfares and other similar schemes.

However, the bitterest of all pills is to reduce the volume of vehicles by streamlining vehicle purchases. In the past three months, car sales increased by 40 percent and motorbikes by 65 percent — goodness, where will you put those new vehicles! And our roads are not growing on trees!

If we could restrain the poor street vendors from selling their wares along the streets which slackens traffic flow, then we should restrain car manufacturers from selling their cars! Of course, this is not without financial and industry repercussions.

Another bitter pill is an effective and determined vehicle phase-out program similar to Singapore where vehicles plying the streets for about ten years must be retired.

Buying a new car would be cost-effective rather than registering a ten-year old car. Yet, purchasing a new car in Singapore, as Hollywood actor Vin Diesel would say, is crazy because of the prohibitive prices and stringent requirements.

Back here, we still have to struggle with transport groups over the issue of phasing out the running “coffins on the streets” — the passenger jeeps, the worn-out delivery vans and trucks, cars of vintage models and backyard assembled vehicles with surplus engines, which other countries such as Japan dumps on our junkyards!

However, such drastic measures need a political will, a hand of steel.

This could be the rationale behind the appeal to Congress to grant President Rody Duterte emergency powers, which was outrightly rejected by the Senate.

However, emergency powers are granted only during a state of calamity and crisis. Probably, there is no transport crisis, but the situation is critical.