With the elections barely just three weeks away, the news and social media feeds have been going crazy reporting on the presidentiables (and of course the vice presidentiables, senatorial bets, etc.).
Campaigning, politicking and mudslinging have reached fever pitch. Scandals are now popping up left and right, and even a candidate’s most minute details (what he said, his/her clothes, skeletons and secrets) are now being brought to light.
But for the average motorist, this means little, if anything at all. No, to the motorist, what we need to hear are specific and concrete plans for change, improvement and sustainable development.
Unfortunately, I’ve yet to hear of a detailed platform that is not highfalutin or too far-fetched, laced with sweet words and lots of window-dressing.
So dear candidates, please hear me out. This is what we, the motoring public, would like to hear. We are significant number of people.
With over 320,000 new cars in 2015, it looks to be that we will hit as much as 380,000 by the end of 2016, unless you (and the current administration) do something to kill our local economy.
First, we want to hear how you will improve the traffic situation. Improving traffic policing and management is obvious, but how will you do it?
And no, a hare-brained idea such as number-coding or something similar is preposterous.
Want a suggestion? Decentralization. You need to entice big business, foreign investors and Manileños to move out of Metro Manila. This will decongest traffic in the city substantially.
How do you entice them? Tax holidays and incentives, creating a supporting infrastructure, and improving public safety and security.
Cavite and Laguna are the obvious choices down south, while Bulacan and Pampanga are the best choices up north as these provinces are within striking distance of Metro Manila.
These provinces are filled with skilled, knowledgeable and talented young professionals who often default to moving to Metro Manila in search of a job.
Last on this topic, government agencies should also move out of Metro Manila. Doing so further entices big business, foreign direct investments, institutions such as schools and universities to also move outside of the Metropolis.
Secondly, we’d like to hear your plans on public infrastructure. More roads into and out of Metro Manila please. And ones that completely bypass the city-centers to avoid traffic and congestion, as well as hastening logistics of valuable goods and perishable produce from the north to south vis-à-vis.
We also need better roads. If I came up with a separate commentary on what roads needs improving, I can probably fill up three pages of major roads, thoroughfares and avenues that I pass by regularly.
We also need more bridges. Metro Manila is a metropolis divided by the Pasig River. And yet there are only a handful of bridges to cross the northeast and southwestern sides of Metro Manila.
Look at world-class cities such as Tokyo and Sidney; they have loads of bridges. Traffic converges on these handful of bridges to cross the great Pasig River.
Ever wonder why it’s traffic on Edsa-Guadalupe, C5-Kalayaan, Rockwell Bridge and Makati-Mandaluyong Bridge, to name a few traffic hotspots? If the government got its act together, the bridge crossing Kapitolyo directly to BGC in Taguig will be a massively great idea although my good friends in Kapitolyo will probably hate me for suggesting this. It’s such an obvious and critical infrastructure that will hugely decongest traffic.
We also need more elevated highways such as the Skyway Stages 3 and 4, perhaps one that dissects Metro Manila from east to west. If only the roads coming into the province of Rizal were wider, it would develop faster and keep up with its contemporaries in the rest of the Calabarzon region.
A tunnel through the Sierra Madre Mountain through Antipolo is the most obvious answer.
Lastly, we need to improve thoroughfares along Pasig River such as J.P. Rizal Avenue. Improving traffic flow on these roads by widening and redeveloping them will greatly decongest traffic.
We also need provincial buses and bus stations along Edsa to be regulated. We should keep the provincial bus stations near the reclamation area in Pasay for the south-west, and near the Edsa-MRT 3 depot in the north-eastern side of the metropolis.
These bus stations create a lot of havoc, traffic and mayhem simply because their huge sizes are too much for the narrow service roads, arteries and inner city streets perpendicular to Edsa.
Finally, we need more trains. The original plan was for the light rail transit systems to have 12 (yes 12, that is not a typo) lines. The original Edsa MRT 3 line alone has the capacity to handle close to 800,000 people a day with the proper 72 trains operating at 18 hours per day
(6 a.m. to midnight).
Imagine 800,000 people riding the MRT on Edsa. That means substantially less buses plying the roads, more people reaching their destinations on time, and less people lined up making an ungodly chaotic mob on the streets below MRT 3 stations.
Crucially, the next administration needs to plan beyond the current traffic congestion and PUV demand levels. We need to project traffic, PUV passenger ridership, and vehicle sales volumes in the next 20 or so years (ideally 30), then design proper, long-lasting, sustainable and world-class infrastructure, train and road network systems.
Alas, I fear that most, if not all candidates only want to design a plan that meets the immediate short-term needs and will only benefit the constituents during their term, which is a scant three to six years.
We need something that will be good for the next 20 to 30 years, just like how all first-world industrialized countries do it.
This line of thinking is what we need for the rest of the country, and not just for the monitoring public. A clear, doable and sustainable development plan that answers short, medium and long-term goals of the country, not something that is barely acceptable and good for only three to five years.
We need long-term goals, and clear, concise and concrete plans to back them up and ensure their success.
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