THE Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) for Metro Manila may continue or it may be partially lifted on May 16 but, either way, the rule for social distancing will continue to be enforced.
This calls for a distance of a least one meter between persons at anytime – in the street, in parks and other open spaces, in hallways and offices, on factory floors, and in work offices.
It will be easy for offices to reconfigure their work spaces to maintain the one-meter distance between people. Construction workers have all the space they need to stay apart. The problem will be in the mass transport system that brings workers to their offices in the morning and then back to their homes in the suburbs in the evening.
We recall how long lines of commuters used to form along streets to main stations such as that on North Avenue in Quezon City, then filled the coaches to standing capacity. The problem was such that it became the subject of an inquiry by a Senate committee.
When the trains start running again, Secretary Arturo Tugade of the Department of Transportation assures us that the rule of social distancing will be maintained in the four principal railway systems of Metro Manila – Light Rail Transits-1 and 2, Metro Rail Transit-3, and the Philippine National Railways.
LRT-1 runs from North Ave. in Quezon City along EDSA to Monumento in Caloocan City, then along Rizal Ave. and Taft Ave. to Baclaran in Parañaque City. LRT-2 runs from Recto Ave. in Manila to Cubao and Loyola Heights in Quezon City, to Marikina City. MRT-3 runs along the entire EDSA. And PNR brings commuters from Laguna to Divisoria in Manila.
Before the coronavirus crisis, the three light rail systems carried hundreds of thousands of passengers within Metro Manila. LRT-1 carried 500,000 passengers daily while LRT-2 had 200,000 and MRT-3 had 300,000. Transportation Undersecretary for Railways T.J. Batan said LRT-1 trains will now be limited to 12 percent of the usual capacity; LRT-2 to 10 percent; and MRT-3 to 20 percent.
Inside the trains and in the stations, one-meter physical distancing will be maintained. Face masks will be mandatory. Senior citizens, those below 20, pregnant women, and anyone with temperature above 37.8 degrees will not be allowed aboard the trains.
These restrictions will help keep down the volume of train passengers. But the emergency situation will not last forever. Sometime soon, perhaps in a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic will come to an end, much like the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 came to an end.
The new rules and arrangements that will be enforced when the Metro Manila ECQ ends should be closely studied to see what else can be done when all restrictions are finally lifted. We hope we will not be back to the previous situation of long queues and full-packed train coaches and frequent breakdowns in Metro Manila’s main mass transport system.
