Congestion driving Manileños to Iloilo

By Herbert Vego

IT was in 1981 when I left behind 14 years of life in Metro Manila to reside and work in Iloilo City, my birth place. The reason: I had gone weary of the snail-paced back-breaking daily bus rides between my residence and my office. Time would come, I feared, when I would have to rent an expensive condo unit near my office to solve the problem.

Looking back, I realize that my fear has come true. On a weekday today, riding a bus on EDSA – say, from Caloocan City to Baclaran, a distance of 20 kilometers – would take three hours.

In fact, my niece Leny now lives in  a condo unit, a stone’s throw away from her office in Makati to avoid the travel ordeal.

As a college student in Manila in 1967, I remember it was easy to grab a bus, which would cover the aforesaid distance in only 45 minutes.

True, the advent of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) has cut travel time to 30 minutes. But the thousands of passengers struggling to squeeze in and out of its coaches nowadays is not fun. There never seems to be enough trains to accommodate the growing number of harried and hurrying passengers.

The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) never runs out of ideas to solve traffic congestion at EDSA, only to fail.

An outlandish bill introduced in the House of Representatives in 2018 called for granting the President and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) “emergency power”. When the bill failed to move up to the Senate, not a few congressmen wailed, arguing “it could have been the solution to the transportation crisis.”

But not one of them could explain how the President would wield that power to reduce traffic. Emergency power as we know it merely fast-tracks contracts with favored contractors and suppliers, hence prone to graft and corruption

The population and transportation problems are intertwined. I remember that when I first set foot in Manila at age 10 in 1960, traffic congestion was rare. There I was with my parents, riding a fast bus ride from Manila to the farthest point of Novaliches, Quezon City in an hour or less. It was literally cool as we passed by long lines of giant trees lining both sides of the road.

The same road looks and feels different today. Bumper-to-bumper traffic hampers mobility. Gone are the roadside trees; in their places have mushroomed thousands of concrete houses and stores.

On my second trip to Manila to study college in 1967. EDSA was still the most desirable highway to traverse points between Caloocan and Baclaran. I could count on ten fingers the “brand” names of wooden buses covering that route, namely MD Transit, CAM Transit, JD Transit, Yujuico Bus Lines and California Bus Lines. It took them only an hour to breeze through the entire length of EDSA, then known as Highway 54.

The color green dominated both sides of EDSA, with tall grasses locally known as talahib drowning the sparse, low-rise commercial and residential buildings.

Where I lived was a stone’s throw away from what is now the MMDA building in Guadalupe, Makati. The entire distance from Guadalupe bridge to that site was still a straight row of grassy vacant lots.

The same periphery today leaves no room for building a new edifice. To exaggerate in Filipino, “hindi mahulugan ng karayom.”

By comparing the same places yesterday and today, I am sure that the meteoric increases in vehicles and population account for what is now the “transportation crisis.” The population in Metro Manila in 1970, 3.5 million, is nothing compared to today’s 15 million.

I personally know Metro Manilans who have migrated to Iloilo to trade discomfort for comfort. This is evident in the hotels, condos, subdivisions, malls and motor vehicles that seem to have appeared overnight.

The population of Iloilo City is approaching 500,000. But it is no problem because, in adjoining towns, subdivisions have mushrooms still available for occupancy.

To quote Mayor Jerry Treñas, “Uswag, Iloilo!”

-oOo-

‘UNPLUG YOUR APPLIANCES BEFORE A STORM’

THIS is one of the brief energy tips we read in the Facebook page of MORE Power.

It makes sense because lightning strikes occur during a storm. They can cause power surges in the electrical system. Appliances then receive higher voltages than they have been designed for. This can destroy electrical equipment or start fires. Equipment can also be weakened by lightning, which means that you might not notice the damage for several weeks.

If lightning strikes an electric pole, it can create a power surge that can damage your electronics and appliances.