The elephant on the road

ALTHOUGH virtually no one in and around Metro Manila seems to be enthusiastic about it at all, we have at this point resigned ourselves to facing several days of appalling traffic gridlock next week, as the excessive “preparations” for the APEC summit will render several main roads and entire sections of the city inaccessible.

Given that a relatively small part of the population will actually have the means and the leisure to take the government’s suggestion and leave town during the four days of APEC events, the general consensus is that what we will experience in trying to move around and carry on our day-to-day business will remove any remaining doubts that the capacity of the road network in the metropolis has been exceeded many times over. With limited space for new roads and even tighter limits on how much the existing streets and highways can be upgraded to accommodate a constantly growing number of vehicles, the problem appears to be intractable – no matter what the government attempts, our road infrastructure will always be woefully inadequate, and traffic congestion a fact of life.