What about police power?
We have been complaining of the horrendous traffic problem in our cities as if travelling on the streets of other Asian cities, however it is there, is like heaven. These last few days leading to Christmas day, even heightened our woes. Do you know that a trip, in a car, to nearby Consolacion town from Cebu City, a distance of barely thirteen kilometers, takes about two hours? It is even faster to reach that place on foot!
The main object of our seemingly collective complaint is the over crowding of our streets by an exponentially increasing number of motor vehicles. There are just too many cars on the road squeezing whatever little space there is available. So, if we come to think about it, the inescapable question is how do we reduce the number of vehicles in order to clear the streets.
The state is not powerless to address this problem. There is such a thing as police power. I do not mean simply the employment of additional uniformed me to man the streets where traffic enforcers are doing a hell of a good and heroic job. As we have seen, more traffic men do not necessarily translate into free and quick vehicular flow. In fact, in some cases, many hands signaling unscientific directions add to the mess.
Police power is that inherent power of the state to formulate laws, perhaps hurtful to some individuals, but beneficial to the general public. To address our bourgeoning road chaos, I am thinking firstly of one law designed to limit the number of vehicles on the road. Its focus are the rich families.
The moneyed ones are those who have the financial capacity to splurge on new vehicles and still retain in their garage a fleet of old cars. It is easy to locate them. Just cruise along the gated subdivisions in the unholy hours and chances are that you will see 8 to 12 cars parked in the garages of bigger houses and about 5 to 8 vehicles in the smaller residences.
A study showed that most of these cars are used on the daytime because the head of the family drives his own unit to work while the lady and their children drive their own cars to their respective destinations which are largely the office of the wife and the schools of the kids. I really do not tax one's imagination if I claim that there is, in many of these concerned households,a domestic helper who is being driven to the market in still another vehicle. In this context, a family of 6, as well as the helper, brings also 7 cars to the streets.
A law that limits car ownership to say, 4 per family, can correspondingly help reduce the number of road users. If passed, this piece of probable legislation can affect few thousand cars in Metro Cebu alone. But, sure that we have ways to circumvent laws, this measure has to have some provisions that should forestall anybody from going around it. Even then, I doubt if anyone of our lawmakers will have the guts to gather his mind and write this measure. Politicians are afraid of the backlash of the affected rich families. They are aware of the extensive clouts of the economic elite who are the bigger contributors to their political dominance.
Surely, this law will surely be hurtful to the wealthy families owning 8 to 12 cars (or even those with more than 4) we mentioned above because it will somehow deprive them of some privilege. The wealthy ones will understandably fight it out such a legislative measure. They can cry constitutional foul and argue that the statute is a denial of equal protection of the law. Why single them out when they do not prevent other people from buying their own cars. They might have a point in saying that it is oppressive and confiscatory but I am certain on the welter of reason. Each vehicle in excess of the 4 that is not allowed road use opens that space of the street and taken in their total numbers, the road space that is freed can benefit the greater mass of the people. Ah, that is police power!
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