The Holy Week holidays have just passed. And with Covid-19 travel restrictions their most relaxed in two years, the annual exodus to the provinces that started as early as Tuesday and Wednesday last week has come back with a vengeance.
Workers and laborers who were not able to return to their families outside the metropolis in the past two years, saw the opportunity to do so this time around. Families who have been stuck in their houses since 2020, have decided to pack up and head out of the city to experience the peace and quiet of nearby beach resorts and recreational locations.
While this has been the de facto tradition each year, it has also become the “kalbaryo” of sorts for many motorists and commuters. A penance thousands are willing to endure during this season if only to visit family and relatives or take time out from the stress of work. Ironically, to experience the same stress on the road.
This time around, traffic jams that stretched kilometers along both NLEX and SCTEX, even down south along SLEX have become even more difficult to tolerate. Cars, buses and trucks were bumper to bumper at toll booths. The longer travel times have also disrupted bus schedules as commuters packed provincial bus stations. The sheer volume of vehicles that decided to head out of the capital, clearly overwhelming great parts of the two major highways that service the metropolis.
Two issues strike us with glaring clarity this year. First is that we still have only two highways – NLEX and SLEX, bearing the burden of hundreds of thousands of vehicles that leave and enter Metro Manila. Second, the lack of efficient and comfortable mass transportation options such as trains, buses and ferries as alternatives to driving out of the metropolis.
While we can discuss the merits of having more highways to feed the capital, given a choice between that and mass transport, I think having a healthy dose of the latter will serve more in the long run. Let me explain.
In the United States, the Interstate Highway System has become the country’s transportation backbone. With around 76,640 kilometers of roads that create a grid of highways traversing the expanse of continental US territory, it has allowed Americans to drive across states with ease.
Originally conceived in 1956 and completed in 1992, the Interstate Highway System was also supposed to provide ease of movement of military hardware across the US in case of war or national emergencies. By creating a system of interconnected highways that traversed north and south as well as east and west directions, the Interstate surely made driving more convenient to the car-crazy American masses.
During an 8-hour road trip I did from San Francisco to San Diego back in 2014, I was amazed at how many vehicles were moving in each direction along the I-5. The sheer size and width of the highways in certain areas make NLEX and SLEX seem like mere service roads compared to the Interstate.
And while the Interstate Highway System opened up the nation, allowed the development of suburbs outside of cities, and fueled the great American love affair with cars, it did so at a cost of around US$ 530,000,000,000 to American taxpayers. It also gave rise to a myriad of problems dealing with land rights and socio-economic issues in various towns and cities it crossed and bypassed.
Impressive as this feat of American engineering is for its time, not every country can afford to have its own cross-country highway network. Some nations are geographically challenged and make highways impractical and too expensive to construct. And from what we learned about more highways eventually leading to more congestion, a phenomenon we attribute to the law of induced demand, then perhaps our country can be better served with infrastructure that is more responsive to the people’s needs.
I have driven across highways in Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Each time, I was left with a yearning of how much life would be easier for Filipino motorists if we had anything remotely similar to their highway systems.
On the other side of the coin, I have also ridden on the Shinkansen, or the Japanese bullet train, from Tokyo to Hiroshima in the south, and Sendai in the north. I have also experienced the Chinese bullet train as well and even simple city to airport train rides in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.
I have taken ferries that traversed the Hong Kong to Macau route. And I have also flown commuter plane rides that connected my international flight to local destinations in China and South Korea. And I have walked and ridden a bike over long distances as well to various destinations without regret.
In these countries there exists intermodal transportation systems that connect various mass transportation options. Moreover, they make each journey easy to understand and complete. One can even use Google Maps to plot a destination and choose the bus or train option to complete the journey. The app can tell you which bus or train to take and at what time, in each part of the journey.
Every time I take public transportation in these countries, the experiences have been very comfortable, convenient, and relaxing. Certainly something I would do again if only to avoid driving and to arrive at my destination faster.
The real lesson from all of these travels, and yes even our own annual self-flagellation as we drive out of Metro Manila during the Holy Week, is the realization that people need and deserve options. They need to be given viable, comfortable, convenient choices to pursue their mobility.
Bearing with one suffer-highway in the north and one suffer-highway in the south is a disservice to the hardworking taxpayers who want to see their money fund progress that will make their lives easier. Having other forms of safe, affordable, and user-friendly modes of transportation to choose from can even help decongest these highways and allow our countrymen to reach their homes in the provinces in peace.
Traffic and congestion is already bad and unbearable as it is in the city. Let us not wait for things to become just as bad outside of it.
