How traffic is killing the future of this country

WE ALL saw and heard all the groans, expletives and criticism against traffic, the current administration, and whoever Pontius Pilate that would be in any way connected to the worsening traffic condition in the metro.

From the previous 30-45-minute com- mute from Makati to Quezon City, it has now ballooned to 2-3 hours one-way or 1-2 hours on a good day, traveling a relatively short 16 kilometers.

We also heard the government asking for patience and spouting feel-good utterances, such as “traffic is not fatal” (to which the citizens reacted violently).

We’ve also been made aware of how bil- lions of pesos are lost everyday being stuck inside a car, which incidentally has resulted in the Philippines being named the “selfie inside the car” capital of the world.

But there is another effect that not many people have pointed out… and this is how traffic affects our family life and the future of this country.

We’ve heard of all those movements that teach on how important child-rearing by parents is, and on how to mold the next generation of leaders and citizens.

Workplaces are now seeing the importance of work-life balance, to a point that companies are allowing their female employees to either work at home on a result/output basis or have places in the office for their children.

Some companies don’t even allow over- time work because this will disrupt the work-life balance.

But even if the workplaces are slowly adapting to the needs of the nation to have parents spend quality time with their kids, traffic is not cooperating.

Parents caught by bad traffic will come home tired, disgruntled and irritable. Instead of happily attending to Junior’s homework, they will instead welcome the cold embrace of San Miguel to remove the unpleasantness of being stuck in the Shaldan-scented confines of their cars for 2-3 hours.

Instead of the little ones hearing about chivalry, integrity and hardwork, they are left to watch whatever trash is on TV or to play any of the ADHD-inducing iPad games.

You could easily say, well, one of the par- ents should stop working to focus on their family. Ideally so, but because of the growing needs of the family and the ever-in- creasing price of goods (which is also directly affected by traffic), this is not an option. And what about those single parents, who only have themselves for their team?

I attended this bike tour in Madrid a couple of weeks back and discussed with my multilingual guide the problem Europe is facing that could spell disaster for them in a couple of years.

He said majority of the 35-year-old-and- below population have lost the desire to have kids, and are all still living with their parents. They are not having kids, so they don’t feel the need to buy houses.

In short they are not contributing to the growth of the economy. In a few years time, Europe will have an old population, with more citizens depending on welfare and no young ones to churn the economic machine.

With this said, what do you think would happen to our kids, who see how disgruntled and pained their parents are now while working for their future? Would they not have the same mind-set as the Europeans later on?

It’s probably really hard to be part of a government that needs to please everybody. Maybe, we don’t see the whole pic- ture on how hard it is to implement what we feel are obvious solutions: putting the city bus service under government steward- ship; or having a public-private partnership venture, just like what is being done in oth- er countries; or getting a reliable mainte- nance group for the trains.

It might be even harder to include driver’s education in the school’s curriculum to make sure we have disciplined drivers. Imagine how much process and collaboration it would take for the two departments to work together.

If this is the case, what options are we citizens left with? I don’t believe that there is nothing we can do, because we have brought this predicament upon ourselves.

Let us start from ourselves: Arrange carpools and plan your day. For business owners, think of changing office hours so that they don’t coincide with the rush hour. Business owners and employees must work together to see how they can implement a results system or even a report-from-home workday.

With the numerous online tools around, this could easily be done. Workers that can balance work and life well are likely to be more effective than those who always feel guilty that they don’t spend time with their kids.