Pipe-dream solutions to our traffic nightmares

I think I speak for most people contemplating how bad Manila traffic has become when I shake my head and say: I can’t.

The traffic is just insane. So insane that it’s a legitimate excuse for never, ever leaving the house again. (Though, of course, most working folk in Metro Manila don’t have that option.) Manila is now fifth among the “World’s Worst Traffic Cities,” according to Numbeo, which rates the amount of time spent in traffic per day — right behind Egypt, South Africa, Thailand and Iran. (The Philippines still placed third among “World’s Deadliest Countries for Journalists,” though.)

Now the Philippine government has turned to a solution that has the ring of nostalgia to it: martial law in effect, up and down EDSA. Cops are now empowered with a directive to — and I quote — “shoot out the tires” of commuters who flee from PNP sanctions. Whew. Doesn’t that make you feel so much safer? And just feel that traffic moving along like a cool breeze!

Truth is, we’ve seen lots of governmental attacks on the traffic situation here. None address the root problems. But we haven’t really turned to the dreamers: the people who see traffic not as an impossible obstacle, but an opportunity to think big. As I often like to do with real-world problems that are way too big to actually think about, I’ve turned to science fiction for my answers.

• Driverless cars. First seen in Total Recall (“I’m Johnny Cab…”), this is actually an imminent reality, thanks to Google and other companies. Will it solve the traffic mess? Probably not. Although it may make it easier to concentrate on your 1010! cellphone game as you sit parked along EDSA. Drawbacks: early reports say driverless cars can easily be hacked — or at least stopped cold — by a laser pen. That’s because the prototypes operate on a laser system called Lidar to navigate, and that system can easily be outwitted by a simple pocket laser device. So: don’t stop queuing up for that commuter bus just yet.

• Flying cars. You saw them in the Star Wars prequels. You saw them in The Fifth Element. Someday, you might see them hovering over… Manila? Well, Manila may be the most well-prepared environment for testing flying cars, considering that people here are already so used to navigating in so many dimensions at once: you don’t just look forward at the bumper in front of you, you watch out for the bicyclist who’s weaving between cars to your left, or the trike driver who’s wobbling into your lane on the right, or the bus driver who’s doing an abrupt halt in the middle of traffic to let off a single passenger. It takes mad skills to drive in Manila. Emphasis on the “mad” part.

Just recently, Toyota filed patents for the first commercial two-door flying car (tentatively called “Icarus”). But even the most visionary traffic planners see flying cars as more of a potential hazard than a solution. Seriously: would you want your average EDSA-plying jeepney driver behind the wheel of a flying Toyota?

• Jetpacks. Yes, it’s a promise that never really came to fruition. We saw them take off, we saw them sputter after 20 seconds of spent fuel, we saw them fail.

But maybe not. Take the case of Jetman, aka Swiss-born Yves Rossy, who flew his jetpack all the way across the Grand Canyon in 2013. If you can cross the Grand Canyon in a jetpack, surely overtaking on EDSA would be a cinch. But there are still glitches in the technology: Jetman can only operate his jetpack when dropped from a plane at 2,000 feet. Then he basically soars, using controlled jet thrusts to reach his destination. Not an ideal solution to Metro Manila’s traffic woes.

• Frictionless people tubes. Don’t laugh. It’s not just a Jetsons fantasy or the mail-delivery system used in movies like Brazil. Space and energy innovator Elon Musk is working on frictionless travel tubes (the “Hyperloop”) in California to someday shuttle people, say, from LAX to San Francisco at speeds of up to 720 miles per hour. Companies like ET3 are also working on something called Evacuated Tube Transport, a high-speed transportation tube that uses “magnetic levitation” to shuttle bodies through tubes at up to — get this — 4,000 miles per hour. LA to New York in 45 minutes, anyone? Or how about Quezon City to Manila in three seconds, instead of the typical 45 minutes? Hey, we can dream big, can’t we?

Of course, there will be problems to work out. Different size people, for instance. (Solution: S, M, L, XL and XXL tubes in all sizes.) And tube cramming could become a hazard. But for me, tube travel is the preferred pipe dream of the future.

• Teleportation. First seen in TV shows like Star Trek and movies like The Fly (where scientist Jeff Goldblum has a bad crossover episode with a speck of insect DNA), the science here is still very far away. The closest it gets is the theory of quantum entanglement, in which the spin rates of quantum electrons can (theoretically) coordinate over great distances — even across space. But so far, practical applications — like being able to reach across the house for a beer while sitting on the sofa the way Homer Simpson does — are far beyond our ken. Perhaps we should just stick to telecommuting for now.

In the meantime, happy commuting!