Updated
December 5, 2016, 2:22 PM By Andrew James Masigan
In terms of economic
blowback, Metro Manila’s traffic has become as serious, if not worse, than the
power crisis of 1991.Back then, FVR was able to swiftly fill the power
shortfall through emergency powers. The Duterte administration hopes to
do the same for traffic.
For years, the public
has called on the Arroyo and Aquino administrations to classify
the traffic situation as a national crisis and to take appropriate
action, accordingly. It fell on deaf ears. Fortunately,
the Duterte administration is more responsive. Solving the traffic
mess is now its top priority and the DOTr, under Secretary Art
Tugade, is leading the charge.
Like the power crisis,
there is no quick fix to the traffic quagmire. The only solution is to build
the infrastructure needed to allow efficient mobility. In a recent
meeting with Sec. Tugade, I was briefed on 39 projects that would bring about
seamless intermodal connectivity within the metropolis.
Among the projects in
the DOTr’s pipeline are two Bus Rapid Transport lines running Edsa
and Quezon Avenue; LRT 1 & 2 extensions; two Integrated
Transport Terminals at the Coastal Road and the FTI Complex;
MRT 4 from Taytay to Pureza; Subway Line 5 connecting Ortigas, BGC and
Makati; MRT Line 6 from Niyog to Dasmarinas, Cavite; MRT 7 from
North Edsa to San Jose,Bulacan; PNR North Commuter from Tutuban
to Malolos and onwards to Clark; and the PNR South Commuter
from Tutuban to Laguna.
Infrastructure
investments will approximate P8 trillion, all of which will put Philippine
infrastructure at par with that of Thailand. An upshot of this is
that spending in this magnitude will pump prime the economy to grow by
at least six percent until 2022. It will also ensure our
place as a competitive economy in the coming decade.
Sec. Tugade commits to
roll-out these projects within five years, along massive road
construction projects from the DPWH. The caveat is that
it needs emergency powers to pull it off. Without it, delays can
run up to a decade given our tedious procurement processes, right of way issues
and TROs.
Last September, Sec.
Tugade presented the petition for emergency powers to the Senate Committee on
Public Services headed by Sen. Grace Poe. The senator was not convinced.
She stressed the need for tighter controls given the scale of public
funds to be spent. Neither was she satisfied with the DOTr’s package of
accountability measures which include having a Senate oversight committee and
having a “transparency portal” where all transactions entered into
will be posted online.
This is my take on the
matter. The traffic crisis has come to a point where we no longer have
the luxury to expend precious time in endless deliberations. We
must build now. Not to do so will render Metro Manila an even more
hostile environment for business and life, not to mention compromise the
country’s economic development in the years to come.
Let’s not fool
ourselves, corruption exist even with the most stringent control measures in
place. Assuming we suffer a 15 percent corruption leak with emergency
powers, it will still be less than the losses we will incur if we
don’t build. As it stands, losses due to traffic already amount
to a staggering P865 billion a year.
We should support the
DOTr plan to expedite infrastructure construction through emergency powers
since what is at stake is our economic survival and our quality of life.
It is the solution we have long been waiting for.
At last, the DOTr is
working with the urgency that a crisis calls for. We should not
allow the bureaucracy to stand in its way.
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