Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman Danilo Lim told a congressional hearing last week that he is thinking of a two-day coding scheme to help mitigate the curse of heavy traffic in the metropolis.
My friend Danny, after having taken on a job that is “thankless” by most accounts, cites the difficulty of fitting in 30 percent of the country’s motor vehicles upon less than five percent of the nation’s road network.
In the few days that I was in Metro Manila from Taipei where traffic flows exceedingly better, and progressively enduring the palpable gridlock in our streets through the years, I can only commiserate with the former Scouts Ranger general who probably finds attacking armed enemies much easier than having to untangle the day-in-and-day-out mess in our streets.
To start with, there really are far too many vehicles plying a road network designed for 50-year old carrying capacity.
Danny should ask the economic managers to first lessen the entry of new vehicles into the NCR grid. This may entail a comprehensive policy far more unpopular than increasing excise taxes on motor vehicles.
Recall that in the so-called Tax Reform Bill now approved by the House and up for Senate deliberation, excise taxes on motor vehicles would be increased depending on classification, not only to raise revenues but more importantly, to act as dampener to the propensity to buy more and more vehicles.
Knowing the Filipino’s aspirational hierarchy, the increase in excise taxes just might not do the trick. The economic managers, along with transportation department officials, may we suggest, should:
First, coordinate with the Bangko Sentral and through it, the banking and financial institutions to tighten the credit screws on car loan financing, including raising interest rates and making it more difficult to get approvals. Now this would be certifiably unpopular with the middle class as well as the car distribution companies, but we must take bitter medicine if we want to put some sanity into our gridlocked system.
After all, the financial institutions are now saddled with unpaid mortgages and their inventory of foreclosed motor vehicles is quite high. Mere storage costs and continued depreciation has become a huge burden. As for the car distributing companies, well, they can take a hit. There is hardly any car manufacturing in the country anyway. We just import and sell, having lost out to Thailand on car manufacturing and even assembling knocked-down parts.
Second, and this is again going to be quite unpopular—follow the Singapore practice of requiring certificates of entitlement payable through a hefty fee before anyone is allowed to buy motor vehicles. The more expensive the brand and model, the higher the COE fee. This will effectively make prospective buyers of second or third or umpteenth cars have second thoughts about conspicuous consumption.
The COE can be transferable, as in a holder could sell his to another party. The Land Transportation Office and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board could be looped in for implementing guidelines, so for instance, LTFRB may want to exempt badly needed public transport vehicles.
Singapore, the small city-state with the highest per-capita income in Asean, needs to regulate the number of motor vehicles in its streets, while in NCR, even those with subsistence incomes want to own a car.
And then there is the difficult question of what to do with our antiquated jeepneys. The DTr has already come up with a phaseout program which the affected sectors are understandably opposing. But it is high time we discard ante-diluvian practices and bite the bullet on hard measures.
There are far too many buses crowding Edsa and even Taft Avenue, among others. Except during peak hours, you see many of these cruising around looking for passengers to at best half-fill empty passenger seats. And if reports are accurate, many of these are “colorum,” operating without franchises or licenses. Surely a general of Danny Lim’s caliber can do something about this unabated malady and flouting of the law.
And do not forget illegally parked vehicles. What would otherwise serve as secondary and alternative routes to the perennially clogged main arteries are instead narrowed by vehicles parked on the streets. The “aspiration” of the middle class (sometimes even the rich) of owning cars when they have no parking spaces inside their property limits must be tamed.
No parking space, no car. This should in fact spawn new investments in rented parking lots, with so many idle real estate properties dotting the metropolis.
Of course these measures can only mitigate the problem, because at the end of the day, Danny and the MMDA’s woes can only be solved big-time if we had an efficient public transport system. Art Tugade’s dreams will, however, take some time before they can be realized.
But the gridlock is a NOW thing. Solutions cannot wait, because the toll on public patience, on business down time and its concomitant costs, not to mention fuel costs, is incalculably unbearable.
And if comprehensive, even draconian solutions cannot be effected in the time of Duterte and Danny Lim, we may never be able to effect solutions to the gridlock.
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Speaking of number-coding, once erroneously called color-coding, I take note that in Taiwan, there are very few vehicles sporting colors other than black, white or grey. Drab though it may seem, Taiwanese are conservative when it comes to choosing colors, be they apparel or cars. Just like the Japanese. Think clothing by Muji, and its lack of color choices.
A well-known car company launched months before a new model intended for the millennial market. Their showrooms were filled with bright green-colored cars, the same color motif echoed in their TV commercials.
Guess what—it didn’t work. Months later, what you see in their showrooms are white and silver-grey cars, no more green.
If we stick to coding, how convenient if all our vehicles were black, white or grey. Then we can really color-code, instead of traffic aides looking at passing cars plates to apprehend. But maybe that’s wishful thinking in these “fiesta” islands, where everyone wants to be different rather than to conform.
Danny would likely wish he could “command” color choices, being used to the military fold where he was an excellent field marshall. But who would give up fire engine reds, and bright yellows, or neon oranges and electric blues, or even hot pink?
