Posted on Monday, November 11, 2002

Long commute means P100-B down the drain

By Dave L. Llorito, Research Head

A typical Erap joke: After a meeting with transport planners from the University of the Philippines’ National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS) one day in 2000, Joseph Estrada shocks his Cabinet by announcing it was a mistake for him to become president and that he was better off he had been an office clerk instead.

Aghast, his ministers ask him how he arrived at that conclusion.

“Because those guys from UP had found out that government officials like me lose more than P100 million each day because of traffic congestion, while clerks lose only about P20 million.”

“It’s unfair,” Estrada goes on. “I lose lots of money just by going home to San Juan. What if I had to commute to and from Tagaytay each day? Dapat talaga nag-clerk na lang ako.”

It may have been a joke, but it has a ring of truth to it. Everyday, millions of Metro Manila residents spend long hours commuting to work or school, and back to their homes. That time on the road translates to high energy consumption, vehicle wear and tear, more people getting sick due to pollution, injury and death due to traffic accidents, lost productivity and incomes, and forgone opportunities.

More than a year ago, transport planning experts Ricardo Sigua and Noriel Tiglao from NCTS wrote a paper assessing the “Economic Impact of Traffic Congestion in Metro Manila.” They tried to quantify the “economic cost” of traffic congestion by factoring in the value of time the people lost due to work trip delays as well as the higher operating and maintenance cost of vehicles.

The computation was based on the survey conducted by the Metro Manila Urban Integration Study (MMUTIS) covering 58,520 households in Metro Manila and the nearby provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, and Bulacan.

What they found out was an eye-opener. (See chart)

“[These figures] indicate a yearly economic cost of about P100 billion,” says Tiglao. “This figure may even be conservative due to averaging. Besides, it does not account for the health and environmental costs of traffic congestion.”        

But why is there traffic congestion? And what can the government do to so solve it?           

Traffic congestion is a very complex phenomenon. One way to break it down is to look at it as a demand and supply mismatch: too many people traveling and too few roads and public transport.

Demand comes from the people who need to move around everyday. The metropolis has 636 square kilometers, a residential population of 10 million, and a day-time population of about 12 million. This means that 13 to 16 percent of the country’s population are packed in only about 0.2 percent of the country’s land area.

The high density is understandable. Manila, aside from being the nation’s capital, is also its economic, political, educational, and cultural hub. In the ’50s, there were only two million Metro Manilans. The number jumped to almost six million in 1980 and to 9.5 million in 1995.

In reality, the population base for total travel demand is greater than that. Metro Manila’s sprawl has spilled over to surrounding provinces — Cavite and Laguna to the south, Rizal to the east, and Bulacan to the north. These areas that are within the daily commuting distance to Metro Manila have a total population of five million. As the places of home, work, school, and leisure or play grow farther from each other, the need for motorized travel increases.             

“It is apparent that Metro Manila is not a lone urban area but rather the core of the expanded metropolitan capital region,” says Dr. Hussein S. Lidasan, a transport economist and urban planner at NCTS and the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning.

In effect, the total population of the greater Metro Manila is about 15 million. By 2010, Metro Manila’s population will reach 11.3 million and its surrounding areas, 11.4 million, bringing the total population of the megalopolis to 22.7 million.

“This trend in urbanization, coupled with widespread urban poverty, represents a severe challenge to public authorities... seeking to provide decent urban services including transportation services that impact on the daily lives of citizen,” says Rogelio U. Uranza, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) in a paper entitled “The Role of Traffic Engineering and Management in Metro Manila.”

This rapid population growth is matched by the rapid rate of motorization. Uranza says that vehicle registrations have been rising at about 4 percent in the last six years. But while the growth of car and trucks with trailers have been generally low, that of utility vehicles, buses, motorcycles, and tricycles have been dramatic.

Utility vehicles have been increasing at 4.9 percent, buses at 7.9 percent, and motorcycles and tricycles at 9.3 percent.

“It is noticeable that the largest increase were experienced in the vehicle categories that cause most concern in terms of air pollution,” says Uranza. Right now, there are about 1.3 million vehicles in Metro Manila, about 80 percent of which are cars and utility vehicles. The remaining percentage are shared by buses, trucks and trailers, and motorcycles and tricycles.

More than 20 percent of the Metro Manila households have cars; it was 9.5 percent in 1980. In 1996, registered cars in Metro Manila and adjoining provinces reached 739,000; by 2015, it will rise to 2.12 million as household incomes and the population rise.

Too many people and vehicles equals too many trips. Based on the MMUTIS survey, people in the Greater Metro Manila (NCR plus adjoining provinces) take 29.7 million trips each day, 23.2 million of which are motorized. The remaining 6.5 are walking trips. Of the motorized trips, 18.5 million (79 percent) are done through buses, jeepneys and taxis, and 4.7 million (21 percent) through private vehicles.

By 2015, the MMUTIS study says the total number of daily trips will reach 54.5 million, of which 43.7 million will be motorized. The share of public transport will drop to 66 percent (28.9 million) and the share of private vehicle trips will rise to 34 percent (14.7 million).

About eight out of ten people in Metro Manila commute or drive. The number of trips depend a lot on socio-economic backgrounds. Almost half of the trips comes from residential areas, followed by educational facilities and office and commercial establishments. The number of people on the road are highest between 6 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.

In the morning, trips to school are significant between 6 and 7 a.m.

The study confirms the title conferred to the jeepney as “king of the road.” The jeepney is the transport of choice for trips to work (34 percent), to school (46 percent), for private purposes (42 percent), and for business (21 percent).

People take the bus to work (24 percent) and to private trips (13 percent). Tricycles are used for school trips (21 percent) and business trips (13 percent) and private trips (12 percent).

Taxis are mainly used for business trips (14 percent).

Metro Manilans drive cars for business trips (25 percent), to work (20 percent), and for private trips (21 percent). Car trips to school are also significant (10 percent).

Only three percent take the train to work and school. The Metro Rail Transit was not operational yet when the study was made.

While the number of people and vehicles are growing fast, the number, length, and quality of roads have not significantly improved over the years. Currently, Metro Manila has about 4,900 kilometers of road, divided into “national roads” (895 kms.); city, municipal, and barangay roads (2,366 km); subdivision roads (1,639 kms.); and privately operated toll expressways (37 kms.). But these numbers have hardly changed. Because of land acquisition problems and funding problems, only about 75 kms. of new roads have been built since 1982.

Worse, transport experts say, Metro Manila’s roads are not integrated into a functional network.

“To date in Metro Manila, national agencies have sponsored mode-specific plans and policies, with limited regard for developing an integrated, intermodal transport system. ... In general, road construction...  has not taken into account the stop and drop off sites, transfer points, and waiting areas needed by buses, jeepneys, tricycle services,” according to a World Bank project appraisal document for the Metro Manila Urban Integration Project dated May 23, 2001. “The resulting chaotic traffic along major corridors and near road junctions severely affect the overall traffic flow, causes delays, and increases safety hazards.”

One example of this uncoordi­nated road construction is the Manila-Cavite Coastal Road. Driving from Manila, one breezes through the tollway on a good day, facilitated by the construction of a parallel highway called the Diosdado Macapagal Highway. But because the proposed extension of the coastal road up to Noveleta, Cavite, remains on the drawing board, traffic chokes up at the Talaba/Zapote area, causing monstrous traffic jams during peak hours every day. It’s a story that is repeated every day in other major thoroughfares.

Too many people making trips and too many vehicles scrambling for limited road space and bad driving behavior among motorists — this is the complete recipe for chaos on the road every day.

“The number of traffic-related accidents may ... increase because of traffic congestion. The behavioral characteristics of Filipino drivers exacerbate the problem. Beating the red light, driving on the other side of the road, frequent swerving, etc. often result in accidents. Also, due to delays... the patience of many road users wears thin and tempers flare, thereby causing more [traffic problems], says Sigua and Tiglao.

Part 2 | Conclusion