Congestion driving Manileños to Iloilo

By Herbert Vego

MY friend Berd Vargas told me he had retired from his job as radio disc jockey to concentrate on selling condominium units here in Iloilo City. From his smile I gleaned success in his new job.

Indeed, the high-rise condos in Iloilo City have mushroomed because of the influx of new residents, including some of my relatives who used to live in Metro Manila. One of their reasons is to escape heavy traffic.

I myself had resided in Metro Manila for 14 years until 1981 when I had to get out to settle down and work in Iloilo City, my birth place. I had gone weary of the time-consuming daily bus rides from Project 8, Quezon City to Quiapo, Manila.

Looking back, I realize that my feared scene has come true. On rush hour today, riding a bus on EDSA – say, from Caloocan City to Baclaran, a distance of 24 kilometers – would take two to three hours.

As a college student in Manila in 1967, I remember it was much easier to grab a bus, which would cover the aforesaid distance in more or less 30 minutes.

True, the advent of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) has normalized travel time. But the struggle to wiggle in and out of its coaches nowadays is not fun. There are never 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 former President Rodrigo Duterte would wield that power to reduce traffic. Emergency power as we know it merely fast-tracks contracts with favored constructors and suppliers without bidding, hence prone to graft and corruption

This corner believes that the population and transportation problems are interconnected.

When I first came to Manila at age 10 in 1960, vehicular congestion was rare. I vividly remember that day that I travelled with my parents on a speeding bus to Novaliches, Quezon City. It was literally cool as we passed by long lines of giant trees dotting 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 next trip to Manila to study college in 1967. EDSA was still the most desirable way to travel from Caloocan to Baclaran. I could count on my fingers the “brands” of buses covering that route, namely MD Transit, CAM Transit, JD Transit, Yujuico Bus Lines and  California Bus Lines.

The color green dominated both sides of EDSA, with tall grasses (talahib) drowning the low-rise commercial and residential buildings.

Where I lived in the 1970s 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 largely a straight row of grassy vacant lots.

The same periphery today leaves no room for building a new edifice.

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.

-oOo-

NEGROS POWER TRAVELS ‘ROADLESS’

THE job of linemen from Negros Power Corporation rehabilitating the power lines of what used to be Central Negros Cooperative (Ceneco) does not always require driving service vehicles.
The reason is because, at some points, there are no roads on which to travel with their poles, cables, transformers and other heavy facilities for installation.

But as a song says, “ain’t no mountain high enough” to prevent the crew from walking, aligned like ants while carrying on their shoulders heavy loads to fulfill their mission to energize the entire the cities, towns and barangays covered by Negros Power’s franchise. For example, this involves short-cutting through the sugarcane fields connecting Bacolod and Silay cities.

A video on these awesome “unsung heroes” is available on Negros Power’s Facebook page.