Coding Conundrum

As I sat in what seemed like the epicenter of every single one of Metro Manila’s 1.7 million registered vehicles that were crawling out like crabs in a bucket through our rain-soaked streets last week, it got me thinking that we really should have a unified vehicular volume reduction program (UVVRP) to ease up the roads a bit.

Oh, we already have that, you say? Um, well, sort of... Problem is, there’s nothing unified about it.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not exactly for or against coding, I just feel that if we’re going to have it, just like any general traffic rule, it really needs to be more consistent. There can be some minor exceptions, of course, but essentially, road rules are one of those things in life that are just better off left simple and uniformed – kind of like the ten commandments, the wheel, and Facebook.

Take Makati, Malabon and Las Piñas as an example. While the unified vehicular volume reduction scheme (aka coding) dictates that affected vehicles cannot travel between 7-10am or 3-7pm, these autonomous regions don’t offer a window for off-peak travelers to dart in and out, so to speak. It may be for good reason, but the lack of effective communication and road signs generally leads to all sorts of confusion for unsuspecting motorists.

Pasig, on the other hand, does offer a window. Problem is, they are completely out of sync with the rest of the metro. They have a window from 9am-4pm, rather than the standard 10am-3pm used by everyone else, which once again has managed to catch more than a few people out.

Thankfully Taguig no longer has coding – depending of course on what street you’re on. According to the MMDA, Global city has dropped it, but if you happen to be at the foot of the Nichols bridge, or other parts of the Fort, you will get nabbed by the boys in pale blue. Or worse, the MAPSA. What makes one part of the city Taguiger than the other is a debate that will rage on long after this newspaper spends its retirement in a fish market.

A classic example of this is at the entrance to EDSA when coming in from Kalayaan Avenue in the Fort. Just before the foot of the flyover that leads to the Southbound lanes of EDSA and the right hand turn into the Northbound lanes, you may notice two Makati traffic cops (MAPSA) in their yellow and brown uniforms. Apparently they are standing on the 2.5 square meters in between Taguig and EDSA that belongs to the no-coding-window of Makati. It is literally a “boundary line” no wider than a motorcycle, but unless you can do a “Dukes of Hazard” jump over them, there’s no way to legally go from Kalayaan avenue to EDSA without getting busted.

While many of us have already grown accustomed to the erratic and seemingly random implementation, spare a thought for our provincial visitors, or those who don’t travel in these areas frequently enough to understand the eccentricities. Once again, it comes back down to consistency and effective communication and proper signage. Imagine a red light meaning anything else other than stop? Exactly. Because just like the humble toilet roll, some things have just hit an evolution plateau and should remain simple.

Sadly, our coding system is far from that; some exemptions may be genuinely filled with the best of intentions, of course, just like emergency vehicles, select media (that should not include glossy magazines or most sections of the paper), or in the case of Makati, even senior citizens, but combined with all the other “exemptions” and time slots etc, I don’t just need an excel file with a wicked processor and at least 4gigs of ram on hand to legally navigate myself through the metro and keep track of cities that insist on having their own time zones, but I also need a separate list to work out which parts of the city are not recognized by their parents.

Pasay City, for example, implements Number Coding except on the following roads: Ninoy Aquino Avenue, MIA Road, Domestic Road, Portions (?) of Airport Road, Sales Road, Tramo and presumably any street where the wind blows north westerly. EDSA, C5, Pres. Diosdado Macapagal Avenue, Roxas Blvd (Pasay) have window hours regardless of the city. There’s no mention of the South Super Highway.

Did you get all that? If so, pat yourself on the back because you join a very exclusive bunch of people that do. My wife wasn’t as lucky a few years ago and accidentally strayed into one of those 2.5 square meters in Taguig where they actually implement coding. She tried arguing, but without a hard copy of these guidelines, they ended up taking the rear plate of our car.

She may or may not have been in violation, but it doesn’t change the fact that it should never need to be this complicated to begin with. Seriously, if it keeps up like this, you won’t just need to sit a test to get your license but get a PHD in UVVRP.