Ask five Filipinos how to solve a problem like traffic, and chances are, you will get 20 different answers—at least. That’s how we’ve become experts in our opinions about traffic, obviously because we live with it 24/7.
One doesn’t have to be a technocrat to mull solutions to the traffic problem. Conventional wisdom leads one to these solutions:
Expanding the road network is better than nothing, but it’s a palliative, given how many vehicles are added every year, the growing population and fixed land mass (unless we annex China. Joke!). We can build only so many flyovers and expressways.
The only solution is a mass transit system, in whatever form: subway, train, trams, skytrain. Mass transit system that works!
There’s no getting around it. Urban planning is a century overdue. We must decongest the metropolis. A megapolis population using a 1950s infrastructure is a tragedy.
On these pages, the Lifestyle staffers write their daily commuter’s diary in the hope that we’re giving a voice to the millions of commuters out there.
Do you hear us?