Headless chickens

There was no thunderstorm over western Metro Manila Wednesday like the one that hit the previous night, but traffic still crawled along the southbound lane of Macapagal Boulevard and surrounding roads.

The gridlocks have become a daily ordeal for several weeks now, thanks to the huge potholes dotting the boulevard all the way to the junction with Coastal Road.

Officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways have said the boulevard is under the jurisdiction not of the DPWH but of the Public Reclamation Authority, formerly the Public Estates Authority. The PRA is a government corporation under the environment department whose general manager and CEO is Peter Anthony Abaya, brother of Transport Secretary and acting Liberal Party president Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya. The public is suffering from an infestation of Abayas.

The PRA reportedly rejected a DPWH offer to repair the potholes, saying the work contract had already been awarded. Repair gangs were seen at work yesterday, although the afternoon thunderstorm probably washed away the fresh pavement again.

The traffic problem has clearly caught daang matuwid flat-footed. This is evident in the responses of every administration official to the problem. LP standard-bearer and soon-to-be-ex-Interior Secretary Mar Roxas summed up the attitude of the administration: traffic gridlocks are a sign of economic growth.

It’s like putting a positive spin on the overseas Filipino workers phenomenon. Every administration has portrayed OFWs as heroes fueling economic growth, without emphasizing the fact that they’re leaving by the millions because of lack of opportunities in their own land.

To be fair, Roxas has a point; more Pinoys are buying cars and motorcycles, indicating growing purchasing power. But there is also such a thing as traffic management, and here daang matuwid has failed to do its homework or anticipate the impact of mismanagement.

The same lack of foresight gave us the power crisis in the final months of the first Aquino presidency. This time the final months of this administration will be remembered for the numerous derisive jokes about the baku-bakong daan where nothing moves.

Senatorial wannabe Chairman Francis Tolentino of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority has become, unfairly or not, the face of daang matuwid’s cavalier attitude toward the traffic mess. The MMDA chief tried to get some sympathy but succeeded only in further infuriating the public when he said he himself was trapped in Tuesday night’s traffic.

Tolentino might have been telling the truth when he warned that the traffic problem would persist for the next 15 years. But seeing him pressing the flesh around the country while Metro Manila is immobilized by traffic gives the impression that he has given up trying to untangle the mess and he’s telling people (as P-Noy’s BFF memorably told Tacloban officials in their moment of need): bahala na kayo sa buhay nyo.

It felt like that on Tuesday night.

* * *

If an hour-long downpour can create such a mess, we shudder to think of what might happen in case something worse hits. Will a two-hour thunderstorm spell double trouble?

And if an hour-long downpour can paralyze Metro Manila, what happens if a powerful earthquake strikes and knocks out electricity and traffic lights, water supply (to put out fires), telecommunications and the glitch-prone light railway services?

An earthquake scenario is on our mind because preparing for the Big One is what seems to be preoccupying the guy who’s supposed to coordinate traffic management and flood control in Metro Manila.

Again to be fair, the MMDA has always found it difficult to coordinate anything in a metropolis of independent republics. But Tolentino continues to reap flak, this time for being in charge of flood control – a responsibility that the MMDA got from the DPWH.

The MMDA reportedly put on stream last July 15 two additional water pumping stations – one in Binondo and another in Quiapo. MMDA officials said all 25 pumping stations were working Tuesday night. So why did the floods take forever to subside?

Around the NAIA, the Parañaque River overflowed. Flooding in that area has worsened since a casino (now shuttered) was built along the Ninoy Aquino Road and natural water drains were blocked. Similar problems have cropped up in many areas, notably Dagat-Dagatan in the Malabon-Navotas area. Property developers have blocked natural drains and catchments for rainwater.

Restoring such drains or creating alternative paths for water are among the measures that can be done within what’s left of the Aquino administration.

The government also needs an efficient monitoring system that can provide a picture of traffic flow all over Metro Manila. This will allow traffic enforcers to know where motorists can take a detour to ease or avoid bottlenecks.

The MMDA has a video monitoring system but I guess its coverage is limited – it didn’t look like it was working around the NAIA Tuesday night. Along flooded MIA Road, MMDA enforcers refused to allow southbound vehicles fleeing the NAIA gridlock to turn left on Quirino Avenue.

I took advantage of conflicting orders from several MMDA enforcers and turned left, so I learned that less than half a kilometer from the paralyzed intersection, traffic was light on the flood-free avenue.

Allowing other motorists to take that route would have saved them a lot of grief – and eased the gridlock. Instead motorists were directed to head toward Macapagal Boulevard, where they ran into more traffic. One of our editors who took this route for a circuitous drive to BF Parañaque got home at 12:30 a.m., after a drive of four and a half hours from Manila’s Port Area.

Along EDSA-Taft members of the police Highway Patrol Group were visible with their neon green vests, but there’s only so much that human intervention can do when the infrastructure is dismally inadequate. Especially if traffic enforcers are just running around like headless chickens, like those MMDA guys at the MIA Road-Quirino Avenue junction.

The traffic problem shows the wages of lack of foresight and general inefficiency. With time running out on daang matuwid, there’s not a lot that the public can do beyond joking about the regular ordeal, and waiting for this pestilence of incompetence to pass.