EDITORIAL - Best of plans can fail reality tests

There is a plan to set aside a motorcycle lane in Cebu City streets. It is a good plan. And it couldn't have come at a better time. But a plan, no matter how good, will not mean anything unless it is implemented well. In fact, before any assessment can be made on whether a plan was implemented poorly or implemented well, it has to be implemented first.

About a decade or so ago, there was not just a plan but an actual city ordinance designating certain lanes as off limits to jeepneys. It was meant to operate along the same principle as the planned motorcycle lane, only in reverse. And as with the planned motorcycle lane, the no-PUJ lane was intended to control and manage the threat posed by a certain type of vehicle whose operators tend to cut lanes and weave in and out of traffic.

The no-PUJ lane never took off. It never got implemented. There was probably not a single jeepney that was apprehended for violating the ordinance. The same fate could await the motorcycle lane plan, if it even gets past first base. Filipino law enforcement is notoriously poor in, well, enforcement. There is no shortage of good laws in this country. It is in the implementation that the best of intentions disintegrate.

There is no doubt the proponents of the motorcycle lane are fired by the best of intentions, as must have been the planners of the no-PUJ lane. But before anyone starts to get the legislative mill running, perhaps it might serve our legislators well to ponder on the prospect of their laboring mightily to produce a gem of a measure, only to lose it to apathy and lack of seriousness later.

Before any word might be hammered into a draft ordinance on the matter, it might be worthwhile for the framers to consider first the possibility of getting a prior commitment from law enforcers to really enforce the law without let-up. Otherwise the best of intentions may only end up being just another dead letter ordinance of which there are already so many in this city.

But even then, a commitment is still just a commitment, a promise. Unless there are really several warm bodies ready, able and willing to carry out the letter of the law, if one is even forthcoming, commitments will not lead to anything. For a plan anchored on an intention that is so good, it is truly heart-breaking to see too little prospect for the plan to come to a fruition.

If, in accordance with the plan, a study had been made, it will surely emerge that with downpayments as low as P2,000 there will eventually be a surfeit of motorcycles on the streets, too much for anyone to control and manage. From the no-PUJ lane fiasco, it can already be surmised this early that even with motorcycle lanes, there is no guarantee motorcycles will not continue cutting and zigzagging across other lanes. And all because enforcement is not there.