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By Dave L. Llorito, Research Head
2nd of 3 parts
(Billions of pesos are lost every year
because of long hours spent by Metro Manilans commuting. A study has
traced the problem to too many vehicles and too few roads. But the
lack of a master plan to guide the agencies concerned is another
aggravating factor.)
INSTITUTIONAL gridlock among various government
agencies, besides technical problems, is one of the major reasons
behind the worsening traffic congestion in Metro Manila.
“People tend to perceive congestion as the
main cause of urban transportation problems,” says Dr. Hussein S.
Lidasan, transport economist from the National Center for
Transportation Studies based in the University of the Philippines in
Diliman. “However, traffic congestion is not the root but rather
the manifestation of the intertwining technical and institutional
problems [affecting urban transportation] in the region.”
In a recent research paper, “A Look at the
Transportation Situation in Metro Manila and Mitigating Measures to
Alleviate the Impacts of Traffic Congestion,” Lidasan notes the
absence of an integrated master plan agreed upon by the cities and
municipalities that make up Metro Manila. He says that most major
land use projects in the National Capital Region do no follow any
plan which could be identified with any particular land use or
zoning policy.
“The conveyance of people from one place to
another is hindered by deficiencies in the transportation system
that cannot cope with the sudden and undirected growth in certain
areas,” Lidasan says. “A good example is the continued sprouting
of huge shopping malls, condominiums and the like in places where
they critically contribute to the worsening of the traffic
problem.”
Because of “undirected growth,” adequate
infrastructure cannot be provided to address the growing demand for
travel.
“Note for instance, the lack of parking
spaces, the narrow roads, incomplete road network, the lack of
efficient mass transit system, and inadequate traffic signal and
control system,” says Lidasan, who also teaches urban planning at
the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning.
Lidasan says the institutional gridlock is
observable in the poor coordination among government agencies. There
are just too many agencies that their functions and responsibilities
often overlap.
These agencies include the Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority (MMDA), Department of Transportation and
Communications (DOTC), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH),
Traffic Engineering Center, Philippine National Police-Traffic
Management Group, and the Land Transportation Office.
“Policy making and implementation or
enforcement are assigned to specific agencies,” says Lidasan.
“However, these organizations usually disregard or bypass one
another in the performance of their functions.”
It’s a problem that is openly recognized even
among the concerned agencies, particularly the MMDA.
In a paper submitted to the Asian Development
Bank on “The Role of Traffic Engineering and Management in Metro
Manila,” Rogelio U. Uranza, MMDA’s assistant general manager for
operations, says the efforts to come up with an effective
“metropolitan governance” in the NCR started as early as the
1960s.
“It was realized that there was a need to
integrate certain aspects of physical development across the whole
area, including highway networks, transport, sewerage, flood
control, among others,” says Uranza.
These efforts led to the creation of the Metro
Manila Commission (MMC) in 1975. The commission was conceived as a
“manager-commission body” that would coordinate, integrate, and
unify management of local government services, including traffic
management.
The agency became the Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority (MMDA) by virtue of Republic Act 7924 with
broader powers, among them:
1. The formulation, coordination, and monitoring
of policies, standards, programs and projects to rationalize
existing transport operations, infrastructure requirements.
2. Provision of mass transport systems and the
institution of a system to regulate road users.
3. Administration and implementation of all
traffic enforcement and traffic engineering services.
Despite these broader powers, the provision of
transport infrastructure and regulation of transport services within
Metro Manila remains a “largely inter-agency affair,” Uranza
says.
The responsibility for road construction and
maintenance is divided between DPWH for national roads and LGUs for
local roads. The DPWH Traffic Engineering Center has taken the
responsibility for road planning that requires traffic engineering.
DOTC is in charge of regulating vehicle fleet and driver licensing
through its Land Transportation Office. The Land Transportation
Franchising Regulatory Board regulates public transport services and
fares. DOTC also plans the extensions to Metro Manila’s rail
systems through the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) and the
Philippine National Railways.
“In carrying these functions within Metro
Manila, the DOTC has necessarily become involved in ‘transport
planning’ although this often lacks any coordination with the land
use planning or road network planning,” says Uranza in his paper.
He says MMDA’s role is primarily to
“coordinate and integrate” the efforts of local governments and
the central government in drawing up policies and plans and
implementing transport projects.
It also manages traffic flow and enforces
discipline and traffic rules, yet it is not a “highway
authority” in the traditional sense.
“It must be consulted about transport
infrastructure plans and may issue guidance on and coordinate the
development of such infrastructure without being primarily
responsible for either the development or maintenance of the road
network,” Uranza says.
“This distinction between infrastructure
development and operational issues is most problematical in the area
of traffic management, where physical interventions in road layout,
geometry, pavement markings and signage, and the use of traffic
control systems are often an integral part of scheme design,” he
says.
This “institutional complexity,” Uranza
says, “often leads to slow responses to traffic and transport
issues, and is one of the main sources of inefficiency in the
[transport] sector.”
To what extent the organizational tangle has
helped bring about near-anarchy in Metro Manila’s streets can be
gleaned from the strengths and weaknesses of traffic management
measures that have been tried out.
Among these measures are one-way systems,
reversible traffic lanes, yellow boxes, pedestrian barriers,
pedestrian overpasses, EDSA bus lanes, bus stop separators, bus stop
segregation schemes, bus waiting sheds, prohibition of provincial
buses, odd-even scheme, unified vehicle volume reduction scheme, and
truck ban and truck routes.
According to Uranza, many of these schemes fail
because “they are not properly planned, there is inadequate
consultation with road users, they are not properly explained,
enforcement is often difficult or unsustainable, and there is little
monitoring of their impact.”
He admits that some of the problems are due to
MMDA’s weaknesses. He recalls that in 1997, the government created
the Presidential Task Force on Traffic Improvement (Trafimm) to be
the “integrating, coordinating and directing authority on traffic
management in Metro Manila and its environs … ” As of the
moment, Trafimm is inactive although Uranza says the “reactive
mode” of operations still persists in many quarters.
He says the three “Es” (education,
engineering, and enforcement) are still reflected in the
organization of the MMDA. In education, MMDA and LTO has about 20
staff, engineering has around 120 within MMDA and DPWH-TEC, and
enforcement has around 4,700 of which 2,200 are from MMDA and the
rest from the police and LGUs.
“This imbalance has led to widespread reliance
on ‘enforcement’ as a means of solving traffic problems and the
corresponding disregard for the systematic and analytical approach
provided by ‘traffic engineering,’” says Uranza. “This
preference for enforcement has led … to widespread misuse of the
traffic signal system by traffic enforcers, who routinely over-ride
calculated signal settings, or switch off the lights completely.”
The upside is that MMDA and other various
government agencies have built new roads, interchanges, installed
traffic control systems and lane markings; and introduced mass
transportation system, specifically the Metro Rail Transit.
Many of these projects are part of the master
plan drawn up for the Metro Manila Urban Transport Integration
Project.
Dr. Seng A. Felias, a transport planner from
Halcrow Group Limited serving as consultant on MMDA’s
“institutional capability-building program,” says that in 1996,
the average travel speed in Metro Manila was 10 kilometers per hour,
almost as fast as bicycle. In the same period, average travel speed
in Bangkok, Thailand was nine kilometers an hour while those in
other countries in Asia were generally higher: Hanoi, 20 kph;
Jakarta, 15 kph; Kuala Lumpur, 15 kph; Tokyo, 15 kph; and Singapore,
30 kph.
“Now, because of the various projects that are
being implemented, average travel speed has improved to 16.5 kph,”
says Felias.
(Concluded tomorrow)
Part 1
| Conclusion
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