Traffic ills? Just enforce rules, Poe tells admin

Motorists experience bumper to bumper at west bound lane in Commonwealth in Quezon City. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

The government can act on the crippling traffic congestion in Metro Manila and other urban centers even before Congress approves a bill seeking to grant President Duterte emergency powers to address the traffic crisis, Sen. Grace Poe on Thursday said.

“The implementation of traffic rules does not need emergency powers,” Poe, chair of the  Senate committee on public services, told reporters after a three-hour public hearing on emergency powers.

She pointed this out as she scored the absence of several Metro Manila mayors at the committee’s final public hearing on emergency powers, where the panel was supposed to discuss the provision to establish a single traffic authority for Metro Manila.

Poe cited, for instance, the need for stepped up road-clearing operations in Metro Manila’s thoroughfares, especially Gen. Kalentong Street in Mandaluyong City, a crowded route for motorists going from eastern Metro Manila to the cities of Makati and Manila, and vice versa.

“In Kalentong, for instance, there are people who say the lanes are no longer enough because two lanes are being used by vendors and others for other things like that,” she said.

Early Christmas break

Poe also broached the idea of allowing schools to go on holiday break in December earlier than usual, as this would also help ease traffic congestion during the Christmas rush.

“If we have the vacation earlier, (students) can make up for classes in the months when it’s not a busy season for the public,” she said.

The senator said she would bring up the matter with Department of Education officials during a budget hearing on Monday.

Poe noted that Metro Manila residents spent 1,000 hours a year in traffic, more than three times what people in other parts of the world had to endure.

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) is conducting a study to quantify the impact of 21 transport-related projects it has proposed before Poe’s committee to be covered by the proposed expanded powers.

“We will study how much faster the commute will be when the infrastructure have been put in place, from point to point. We will be able to give that to the technical working group,” said Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade.

Tugade said the infrastructure plans would take time to finish, and that these may even take “the entire term of President Duterte.”

The proposed projects include:

-Two integrated transport system terminals in southern Metro Manila

-Improvement of national roads

-Procurement of new train coaches; extension of Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1 to Cavite

-Extension of LRT Line 2 to Masinag, Antipolo and to Pier 4 in Manila

-Increasing the capacity of the Metro Rail Transit System

-Construction of five more metro train lines to connect Metro Manila to nearby northern provinces

-Extension of the Philippine National Railways north to Clark, Pampanga province, and south to Los Baños, Laguna province

-Construction of rail systems in the Visayas and Mindanao

For the air transport sector, the DOTr-proposed projects  include the improvement of runway, taxiway and security facilities at Ninoy Aquino International Airport and other domestic airports, and the redistribution of air traffic to decongest the Manila hub.

Permits for cell sites

Also during the proceedings, Poe said she would include in the emergency powers bill a provision that would obligate local governments to expedite the issuance of permits for cell sites to help speed up access to the internet.

Undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr. of the Department of Information and Communication Technology said red tape was hindering the installation of more cell towers across the country—infrastructure critical in speeding up internet access that would ease online transactions for the public.

Poe’s committee is expected to finalize its report for submission to the plenary by November following technical working group meetings.

Poe hopes the measure would be passed by the chamber before the Christmas break.

At the hearing, she noted the absence of several mayors, who could have given their comments on the proposal to place traffic enforcement under the DOTr’s authority.

Currently, each local government unit exercises its own traffic enforcement authority, while the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority also has an overlapping mandate.

Seamless implementation

Tugade earlier said centralizing traffic enforcement would allow a seamless implementation of traffic rules from major roads to secondary thoroughfares.

“We saw that different towns and cities have this problem. It’s sad that other mayors did not attend. So you’d really see if traffic is their priority or not,” Poe told reporters.

Poe’s committee invited 14 mayors from Metro Manila and other key cities to Thursday’s proceedings. Only Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista and Calamba City Mayor Justin Chipeco attended, while seven sent representatives.

The cities of Caloocan, Makati, Muntinlupa, Cagayan de Oro and Cebu did not send any representative.