Governance

Francis Tolentino, attempting to parry perception his agency failed miserably in managing metro traffic, claims credit for suggesting the Highway Patrol Group (HPG) take over management of Edsa. He uses this claim to somehow offset charges of utter failure in doing his job.

Tolentino, who spends so much time campaigning elsewhere for a national post, is the subject of an online petition demanding his resignation. The MMDA he heads has been condemned for ineffectual governance.

So unpopular has Tolentino become that opposition presidential candidate Jejomar Binay found it worthwhile to include, as part of his program of government, the appointment of a non-politician to the MMDA. That is derogatory comment on how Tolentino, obsessed with self-promotion, allowed political calculation to define his job.

Deploying the HPG to Edsa, however, is an idea first advanced by the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) in a position paper on the traffic situation the group issued last month.

Using the HPG to manage traffic might be a costly option. The police unit is highly trained and, of course, better paid than the MMDA “constables.” It is the lead unit in the anti-carnapping campaign.

Costly as it may be to deploy the HPG to replace the “constables,” the desperate situation along Edsa justifies it. The “constables” have lost credibility among motorists. They have been largely ineffectual, seemingly unwilling to enforce the law and ring order back to the streets.

The deployment of the HPG produced marginal improvement in traffic flow. But that was enough to encourage suggestions that PNP-SAF likewise be deployed to do traffic enforcement. We might as well put Edsa under martial rule and use the army to restore order along the key avenue.

Whatever marginal improvement there might have been will only be short-lived, however.

The MAP position paper notes that enforcement is only one small part of a complex equation. There are three elements to a short-term solution to the infernal traffic flow along Edsa: engineering, education and enforcement.

Those three elements of traffic management are compounded by three larger factors: the severe deficiency in mass transit systems, unsustainable urban development practices and an ineffective governance structure in the metropolis.

Failure in engineering, education and enforcement might measure the shortcomings of the MMDA. Failure in resolving the larger factors mentioned above can only be a measure of total failure in national governance.

MAP made several recommendations for immediate action. These include: the appointment of a traffic czar by an executive order; the deployment of the HPG; specific engineering refinements; fast-tracking the upgrade and capacity expansion of the MRT; upgrading existing major road arteries into expressways; road engineering of major thoroughfares according to the best practices adopted by cities abroad, improving the resiliency of major roads against floods; use of fast construction methods and a campaign for private vehicles to use high occupancy practices.

Needless to say, the utter failure of the DOTC to properly maintain the MRT, much less expand its capacity, is a major contributor to the congestion along EDSA. It did not help that when the traffic situation was beginning to worsen, President Aquino dismissed the problem as merely an indication of our improving economic performance. The President’s sister attributed the problem to increasing population.

In a word, the worsening situation was not properly appreciated early enough. Now we have nothing short of an emergency in our streets.

MAP makes several medium- and long-term recommendations to improve traffic flow. Among these are: building new bridges across the Pasig River; resolve the issues standing in the way of building additional mass transit systems; require adherence to best-practices for mixed-use property development; building a high-capacity subway system underneath the entire length of Edsa; and, legislate the restructuring of governance in the metropolitan region.

All these recommendations address what we have long recognized: our urban planning has been almost non-existent and the MMDA is not the right governance structure for the national capital region. The two are inextricably linked.

The MMDA cannot override the independent constituent cities, all of them enjoying the devolved powers defined by the local government code. As early as the Marcos period, we knew the capital region needed a governor, preferably one directly elected. The constituent cities will be politically diminished into districts.

Unless we do that, no real urban planning could be done. The elected mayors will continue to undermine the MMDA and protect their political turf. This urban jungle will reduce itself to chaos.

There are political considerations we have not been able to overcome. Every chief executive we had was afraid of the rival powers of an elected NCR governor. No mayor in this unplanned urban sprawl wants to yield power to an elected governor.

On both ends, shortsighted political interests staunchly resisted the idea of a powerful elected metropolitan governor. That produced the unseemly situation we now have, where the national government is asked to directly untangle the traffic situation through the Cabinet Secretary.

Although untenable, the Presidency retains its traditional uncontested powers and the mayors theirs. The traditional allocation of powers is maintained even if the metropolitan population suffers the curse of absent urban planning in the end.

Drastic reform must be done at some point – or else, we will be trapped in short-term fixes.

Drastic reform, however, requires political will and a thorough grasp of the administrative solutions the situation requires. Those are not virtues of the Aquino administration.

This city is doomed to kick the can down the congested road – until we find a national leader capable of breaking the political blockade to modern governance.