Expert: Proposed carpooling only a short-term solution to Edsa traffic

Car volume has been blamed as one of the main causes of the heavy traffic in Metro Manila. (File photo by EDWIN BACASMAS / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

A traffic expert cautioned on Wednesday that the carpooling proposal of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) carpooling might encounter the same problems as that of Indonesia, where instead of addressing congestion the scheme gave birth to a new set of concerns.

Primitivo Cal, executive director of the University of the Philippines Planning and Development Research Foundation, said that because of the ingenuity of Filipinos, it was “possible” that what happened in Jakarta when it rolled out the “3-in-1” carpool policy might also happen in the country.

Due to the perennial traffic problem in the Indonesian capital, authorities rolled out in 2003 the carpool policy which limited the use of several major roads during rush hours to high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs), or those with three or more passengers.

However, the scheme failed to address road congestion as it led to the rise of for-hire passengers, known as jockeys, whom motorists pay to skirt the traffic-easing measure. Jakarta scrapped the policy last year.

Cal said that, if Indonesians were able to find a way through the scheme, Filipinos would undoubtedly be able to do the same.

“Filipinos are good at finding an excuse,” Cal, a transportation and civil engineer, said.

For the short term, though, he acknowledged that carpooling would a good measure to address traffic, as it would “higher use of private cars.”

He pointed out, however, that for carpooling to become more effective, the MMDA should dedicate two lanes for HOVs, such as buses, vans and those used for carpools.

“I’m confident that the two HOV lanes would improve the speed of public transport, as well as of the carpool [vehicles],” he told reporters in an interview.

Netizens polled by the Inquirer, however, shot down the MMDA’s proposal, which would give priority to cars with two or more passengers and ban those with only the driver onboard.

Of 1,555 Twitter users, 68 percent said they didn’t favor the scheme, while only 32 percent approved of it.

Netizen @whatsupmarki said that the policy was “too complicated to implement.”

“If they can’t even enforce the easiest of laws like the no-helmet-no-ride for motorbikes, what more this?” he said.

Jojo Garcia, MMDA assistant general manager for planning, earlier said that they would just flag down heavily tinted cars to check if they had complied with the carpool policy.

Another netizen, @marigolden24 asked the MMDA that instead of forcing the public to carpool, the agency should instead focus its efforts on fixing the pickup and drop-off points along Edsa since “these are the cause of traffic.”

Cal said he understood the resistance of several motorists, since they had no alternatives as the country’s mass transit systems remained unreliable.

In fact, since Thursday last week, the Metro Rail Transit-3 has broken down at least 19 times, resulting in long queues. /atm