AS our mobility problem grows despite the fast-growing use of expressways in urban areas, particularly the Metro Manila area, it is time to rethink where we are going toward solutions by taking in all the factors that are involved.
To start, only 6 percent of Filipinos own cars. The rest depend on public transportation, and that is not provided to them by expressways. Considering this minuscule car ownership, it is time to look at other ways of solving our mobility problem like providing for more safe walking, cycling and better roads that have flood control. Roads should be people-oriented. Vehicles are not forbidden, but circumstances brought on by expressways bar pedestrians or people with disabilities, which is becoming the case. We need to think holistically about mobility: more pedestrian bridges across the Pasig River, a strengthened and expanded ferry system, and a much stronger train system, including better maintenance for more trains and more reliable service. These are the kinds of solutions that move people, not just vehicles.
Moreover, expressways, aside from not solving the mobility problem, actually have very negative effects where they are. They darken the area, they produce noise and heat, and curtail pedestrians in many ways like not being able to cross the roads under them because they become unsafe. Their environmental consequences are also negative. To build them, trees are cut or rivers are invaded, exacerbating already existing climate change, which leans toward high temperatures to produce higher temperatures.
Our government agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) are not acting with expertise in authorizing expressways. For example, private proponents so far are the only ones applying to build them and singularly. There is no competition. Here in Metro Manila, we only have two expressway private owners — San Miguel Corp. and Metro Pacific. And yet they are planning a merger which will create a giant monopoly. What is that other government agency, the Philippine Competition Commission doing about that? We have not heard. The whole picture is that there is no bidding process as there is only one proponent for an expressway and so far expressways that empty into our roads just create the usual traffic jams, which those who do not use them have to bear. Something is not fair in this picture.
Also, even expressways produce problems on their own like the flooding of the skyway of SLEx recently and the massive carmaggedon at the NLEx because of floods. It seems they are not even well-constructed or managed to take in weather disturbances of which we have more than enough.
The DPWH has to show some expertise, some authority and some consideration for the non-car owning public and provide roads for everyone. They have to revise spending priorities regarding mobility and rely also on themselves, and not anyone proposing what is for mere private gain. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources also has to come into the scene and defend the environment. Allowing the wholesale cutting of trees on Quirino Avenue is a black mark on their governance of the environment. The TRB is another agency that has made questionable decisions. To start with, when an expressway is authorized, eventually the proponent comes up with so-called extensions, which are actually new expressways. That is the way to get around the environmental challenges by just presenting a technical plan and a financial proposal. Yet they are quickly accepted and authorized. Moreover, the TRB handles the expressways like their babies, toll raise approvals are quickly given, terrible mismanagement as happened recently at the NLEx are given light penalties like the brief period of laughable free tolls from Guiguinto to San Fernando. Who are they kidding? In fact, there is a proposal to forbid any TRB personnel from joining expressway companies upon retirement from TRB, which has happened. Talk about conflict of interest, it is all over the expressway question.
Local governments have to wake up to what is happening regarding mobility. Expressways have been proven to depopulate the neighborhoods they invade because of the negative consequences mentioned above. That means that taxpayers will flee, leaving ghost neighborhoods to be filled up by non-taxpayers. Heritage sites will also be affected in the willy-nilly approval of urban expressways.
In progressive cities like Tokyo, San Francisco, Boston and Seoul, they have actually torn down expressways and mobility did not become a problem because they came up with better solutions. Seoul tore down an expressway over a river and turned it into a linear park. Tokyo tore down an expressway that compromised a beautiful 17th-century bridge, a heritage site, and put the road underground. They listened to public opinion that brought thousands of signatures to do it. Why don’t we learn from their mistakes and the solutions they made to remove them, and not make the same mistakes on our own? Why is public opinion ignored?
Manila city officials, particularly, better start studying what the expressways and the proposed expressways do and will do to their city. They might just end up with a ghost town of environmental destruction, impossible day-to-day healthy living conditions and paralyzed mobility.
The above views with which I fully concur come from a recent forum discussion participated in by environmentalists, technical persons, private citizens with knowledge and experience of expressways, experts on mobility and city residents who use public transportation. This is the gathering opposition to monopoly and construction of unnecessary urban expressways.
Next week, we will discuss the new menace, the Southern Accessory Expressway Link proposed and already at work. It will go over Roxas Boulevard, Malate, Ermita and Intramuros, the heart of Manila, bringing all the dire consequences already experienced elsewhere.