PRESIDENT Duterte included in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday a reiteration of a directive to the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and other government offices concerned to undertake immediate actions to ensure the speedy and smooth flow of traffic in Metro Manila and other cities of the country.
He specified one action that should immediately solve a big part of the problem: “Reclaim all public roads that are being used for private ends. Marami yan, there are many of them,” he said.
The most obvious use of public roads for private ends is for parking by car owners who apparently have no private garages or driveways within the lots occupied by their homes. Every year, for many years now, hundreds of thousands of vehicles have been sold in the country, mostly in Metro Manila, but there has been no corresponding increase in city streets. Worse, private cards are parked end to end in most public streets, effectively depriving traffic of at least one lane.
This is not allowed in most other cities in the world, notably Singapore in our part of Southeast Asia. Before the government in that city state approves a vehicle sale, the prospective vehicle owner has to submit proof he has space in which to park it.
From the time the Philippine government started studying Metro Manila’s tremendous traffic problem, the use of city streets for private ends, such as stalls set up by street vendors, has long been noted. The MMDA concentrated its efforts on Epifanio de los Santos Ave. (EDSA). It is now defending in court another action it seeks to take – ban provincial buses from having terminals on EDSA.
But the outright use of city streets for parking seems to have been missed by the officials concerned. It has taken the President himself to point it out – and in a State of the Nation Address, no less. The President directed Secretary Eduardo Año of the Department of Interior and Local Government to take it up with the local governments.
Suspend any mayor or governor or other local official who does not follow the order, he said. Once freed of illegally parked vehicles and other obstructions, barangays are to ensure the streets remain free from all obstructions.
It must be said that such illegal parking has long been observed as one of the reasons for Metro Manila’s traffic problem, along with violations by motorists, the excessive number of vehicles using streets that have not substantially increased in decades, and – in the view of the MMDA – the hundreds of provincial buses that should not be allowed to add to Metro Manila traffic.
At the start of his administration, President Duterte called on Congress to grant the Department of Transportation emergency powers to solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila and other big cities in the country. Congress has not granted the emergency powers to this day, but the President has pinpointed one part of the problem – the use of public streets for private ends – as something that can be stopped now.
