Too many vehicles slows down traffic

A news article written by our friend Rainier Allan Ronda, of The Philippine Star, caught my attention three days ago. “Too many vehicles slowing down traffic, group says.” Apparently, the Concerned Citizens Traffic Watch concluded that the sheer number vehicles in Metro Manila have caused the flow of traffic in the metropolis to slow down to a “miserable” crawl. Which is exactly the entire unblemished truth. It is so true that transport engineers need not even say that – it’s one basic fundamental fact that governs traffic analysis.

The problem really is what we need to do about it. The transportation and traffic discipline is one area where the understanding and analyses is purely a mathematical exercise governed by the principles of algebra, calculus, geometry, and physics. That’s why all transport studies start with counts – vehicle counts, passenger counts, and surveys – home interview surveys, boarding and alighting surveys, to name a few. Some are either oversimplifying it or making it more complicated, but the basics remain the same – the law of supply and demand.

In previous write-ups, we have discussed about the world’s worst invention – the car. Pro-car enthusiasts, mainly coming from the car manufacturing sector and, of course, those who truly love cars, complain during transport conferences, about this seeming demonizing of the car. But it’s really not that. Cars are wonderful – they take you wherever you want to be (for as long as there is a fairly paved road going there), providing a door-to-door service which is of the best kind, but second only to motorcycles, which can provide you a bedroom-to-office service, … literally! It’s the need for that paved road which makes it the inefficient carrier.

The debate becomes more complicated because of the way we view the problem. People complain of traffic problems, when the real deeper problem is that of mobility. People need to move daily, primarily from home to work (and back in the evening). How to move people is a mobility issue. When you count vehicles on a limited road space – that is a traffic problem. Traffic and mobility may not necessarily mean the same thing. And usually they don’t.

For the Concerned Citizens Traffic Watch to conclude that too many vehicles slow down traffic is a forgone conclusion. I remember a mayor in Mindanao who concluded, when two helicopters collided upon take-off in his city, that the choppers did collide because they were too close to each other! Of course. But in the latter case, we can move on and say choppers should not stay close to each other. In the case of traffic, can we say that we should stop the growth rate of vehicles or even decrease their numbers on the road? Actually, that is a good idea, and it can be done! The question is, will we do it? Will you?

With all due respect to our traffic authorities, traffic and transport woes should not be solved using palliative measures. In Metro Manila, and EDSA in particular, a lot of schemes have been forwarded – U-turn lanes, Christmas lanes, yellow bus lanes, motorcycle lanes, but it seems the problems persist. Another colleague, Rene Santiago, once commented, “Do they really think they can improve traffic with the same volume but without any increase in road capacity?” The most direct solution is simply just really increasing capacities. But the even better solution, and one which is sustainable as well, is solving the mobility issue.

Everybody knows one of Japan’s economic strength is car manufacturing and it has one of the world’s highest car ownership figures. But majority of the population and the average Japanese do not use cars in going to work. Yet, its transport system is so efficient that you get to work like clockwork. New York also. We can do it here – just don’t use your car in going to work … (Easy for me to say that, ha ha ...)