#AnimatED: Solving traffic beyond show of force

When policemen who should otherwise be running after criminals are deployed to man traffic in one of Asia’s most congested capitals, then we have a problem.  

Don’t get us wrong. The new policy of deploying the Highway Patrol Group (HPG) of the Philippine National Police to guard EDSA’s so-called choke points apparently works – Tuesday night’s “carmageddon” notwithstanding. EDSA’s 6 major intersections have been cleared of “colorum” buses, unlicensed vehicles, and illegal vendors. On normal days, commuters used to seeing clogged parts of EDSA post photos of a clear highway – and remarks of disbelief.

Police presence on EDSA indicates an emergency situation. It’s an acknowledgement on the part of the administration that the traffic problem has reached crisis proportions. 

But it is one thing to deal with an emergency, it is another to address a problem that will not go away anytime soon. It is one thing to be lulled by a semblance of normalcy, it is another to know that a band-aid solution can only do so much.

The HPG’s primary task is to run after car and motorcycle thieves, smugglers, killers riding in tandem, and on-the-run criminals in our highways. It has had its share of controversies, miscalculations, and overkill.

In due time, the HPG will find itself asking the hard question: why are we here on EDSA fixing traffic?

That question will come sooner rather than later, as certain as the rise of criminality in the election season.

While it is true that law enforcement is part of the traffic problem, it is not its core. The mess we are in is a result of a maze of interconnected rules and policies that unfortunately have not boosted mass transportation, have not reduced demand for cars and driving, and have not provided businessmen enough incentive to help in building, improving, or managing infrastructure.

Experts say the country is losing P2.4 billion (about $513 million) a day due to traffic. Those numbers say nothing of the impact this has on the way we live, the way we work, and the way we build our future. Quality of air suffers, our parks are turned into parking lots, our anxiety levels grow each time the rush hour sets in – every single day.

Studies have also pointed to how the lack of a viable mass transportation condemns low-income families to poverty.

Reported the New York Times recently: “In a large, continuing study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.”

And so we need more than this show of police force on EDSA.

The government should buckle down and find a more comprehensive, systematic, and lasting solution to a seemingly lasting problem. It should stop praising its stop-gap and superficial approach to the issue. 

We are not wanting in recommendation from experts – from ways to fix the problematic coding system, to providing disincentives to the purchase of cars, to maximizing our road network and using modern technology to connect its signals, to adopting the Bus Rapid Transit that’s been effective elsewhere in Asia and in Latin America, to reorganizing buses, to imposing car-pooling in gated subdivisions and schools.

If the government is invested in addressing this problem, then it can make things happen. After all, it has managed to oust a chief justice, pass a controversial reproductive health law, approve a sin tax law opposed by big business, among others.

Surely it can be just as comprehensive and dead-set when it comes to Manila’s everyday nightmare? – Rappler.com