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Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman
Francis Tolentino has proposed to raise the prohibition in the use of private vehicles in Metro Manila’s streets from one to two days a
week. The goal is to reduce traffic in the national capital region.
Public outcry and disapproval, especially among car
owners, and more particularly from those who have only one car, was high. The
message is simple: Prohibiting people from using their own car/s two days a week
is wrong. Especially if such car is used for business or to transport kids to
school.
The MMDA and many local government units (LGUs) in
the country tend to specialize on having more prohibitions in society: Driving your own car
is not allowed on this day and hours, prohibited to drive on yellow lane,
prohibited to make a left turn or U turn on certain streets, prohibited to
drive your diesel engine car or van unless you pass their arbitrary smoke emission
test.
The twice-a-week-car-ban proposal will actually result in
more traffic congestion because (a) the rich will simply buy additional cars to
go around the coding, and (b) there will be a new problem of lack of parking
for many houses and streets.
A proposal like this by the MMDA Chairman is anti-liberal
and anti-freedom. He is pulling the liberal PNoy government towards more
statism, more prohibitionism and hence, more stupidity. Mr. Tolentino should
remember that he is working under a liberal government, not a socialist or
fascist government.
In a free society, everything is allowed, except for a
few prohibited act -- like murder, stealing, abduction, rape, extortion, arson
and carnapping. In an unfree society like a socialist or fascist government,
everything is NOT allowed, except those with government permits. We are far
from that highly unfree society, but more prohibitions, more regulations and
more restrictions thinking by certain government officials can slowly pull the
country towards such unfree society. And we pay more taxes and fees to pay for
the salaries and perks of people with dictatorial and prohibitionist thinking
in government.
The usual proposal coming from various sectors is to (a) encourage people to take the bus, jeepney
and train more often. Raise the MRT/LRT fare prices and buy more trains. Other
proposals include (b) building more covered walkways, (c) suspending the
approval of new bus franchises or retiring old public vehicles, and (d)
requiring provincial bus lines to stop, load and unload passengers only in
areas near the North and South Expressways and prevent them from using Edsa.
One problem of expecting people to leave their cars at
home and use the bus/jeepney/train is
that many people live in villages and residential areas far from the bus/train
route. So from their houses, they take (1) tricycle, then (2) jeep or bus,
then/or (3) MRT/LRT, then (4) jeep again or walk long to destination,
especially in major commercial business districts (CBDs). The inconvenient multi-ride
system, especially if one is regularly carrying a laptop or important documents
or big cash, or in decent corporate attire, is forcing some people to drive
their cars, even if they have to endure heavy traffic and difficulty in finding
safe parking, or expensive parking fees.
A friend suggested that imposing frequent car bans is
attacking the traffic problem on the demand side, when what are lacking are
solutions on the supply side. One such solution is to construct more bridges
over or across the Pasig River, to provide alternative routes to existing roads
and bridges across the river.
I support this proposal. There are currently about
six or seven bridges across Pasig River. If there will be twice that number, then
the traffic pressure in existing bridges like those in Pasig, C5, Edsa, Rockwell,
Makati Avenue, etc. will be drastically reduced and vehicles will be more
dispersed.
Multiple transport transfer is cool if we are talking of
bus-MRT-bus transfers. But if we are talking of tricycle-jeepney-bus/MRT-jeep
again, the combined fare may be equivalent to the fuel use of a car, not to
mention the inconvenience of such multiple transfers.
There is an existing alternative now, the air-con vans.
They ferry passengers from residential areas to different destinations, particularly
Makati, Manila, Ortigas, Eastwood, Fort Bonifacio and other major CBDs. Just one-ride
instead of three or four.
One problem here is that getting a franchise is very
bureaucratic and costly, hence the presence of so many unregistered vans or
"colorum". These are subject to frequent flag down and extortion by
some corrupt elements of the police, MMDA and the Land Transportation Office
(LTO). These costs -- high franchise fees for registered and high extortion for
unregistered -- make the fare rather high, but still cheaper compared to
driving one’s car.
On expanding the coverage and capacity of MRT and LRT in Metro Manila, Peter Wallace once said that the Avenida/Quiapo to Fairview MRT has been submitted to the government at build-operate-transfer (BOT) or related schemes as far as 20 years ago or longer. But the NEDA Board and the Investment Coordinating Council (ICC) bureaucracy, plus changes in administration, have conspired so that such unsolicited proposal from the private sector at little or no initial cost to taxpayers would remain as plain dreams and never implemented. It is a disease of central planning at the ICC level.
The tricycles are given monopoly routes by the LGUs.
Jeepneys and air-con vans are not
allowed to pick up passengers in routes that were assigned by the LGUs as "exclusively for
tricycles." So people who live in these routes have only three options:
drive their car, get a taxi, or take the tricycle. The first two are costly.
If such tricycle route monopoly is absent, meaning
passengers have a choice to take jeepneys/vans
or tricycles, most likely they will take the former and tricycles will die a
natural death, even without national or local legislation. But the LGUs are
protecting the tricycle monopoly system as they get lots of votes from tricycle
drivers and operators, and these people pay annual registration fee or
franchise fee to city/municipal halls.
A complicating situation is that some debt-pusher institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) contribute to such traffic congestion by pushing some lousy programs, like the $300 million e-tricycle loan. Even a small country like Singapore with just 5+ million people has no tricycle, the more that a country with nearly 100 million people should have no tricycles and have more buses and trains instead.
A complicating situation is that some debt-pusher institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) contribute to such traffic congestion by pushing some lousy programs, like the $300 million e-tricycle loan. Even a small country like Singapore with just 5+ million people has no tricycle, the more that a country with nearly 100 million people should have no tricycles and have more buses and trains instead.
To recap, this paper is suggesting alternative measures
other than the current and expanded car bans:
1.
LGUs should consider removing the monopoly route
system for tricycles, allow jeepneys and air-con vans to serve these routes as
well.
2.
Build more bridges across Pasig River.
3.
Simplify and reduce the cost of registering
air-con vans, encourage corporate branding and competition among them.
4.
Simplify the approval of new or expanded MRT/LRT
lines.
There are many other proposals from many sectors. So long
as they do not advocate more restrictions, more prohibitions by governments on
people to use their own cars, such proposals can be worth supporting.
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See also:
Fat-Free Econ 14: Traffic, Car-pooling and LTFRB, June 21, 2012
Transport Econ 7: Encourage Branding, Deregulate Fares of Taxi, January 02, 2013
Transport Econ 8: Removing MRT and LRT Fare Subsidy, March 08, 2013
Transport Econ 9: MMDA Bureaucratism, May 27, 2013
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