Traffic Woes

Both lanes in EDSA experiencing a heavy traffic.

          Traffic is one of the problems that the Philippines is now facing and as the years passed, it worsened and became more serious than ever. There are more complaints coming from the people, especially from public transporters. It is one of the major causes of their headaches early in the mornings and afternoons sine they are the ones who always bear the pestering effects of traffic.

Traffic in Cebu City late in the morning.

          Filipinos have to wake up early in the morning to avoid traffic especially those people who live far away from their workplaces and their schools but there are some people who wake up early but are still stuck in traffic. This just shows how bad traffic is and this entails an immediate and effective action from the government.

          It is not easy for commuters to keep on waiting especially when inside the jeep  for almost or if not exceeding an hour. This is such a waste of time ; something productive could have been done instead. Not to mention, the heat and the smoke belching that worsens the situation. According to Junjie Mendoza, a thirty to forty minute travel before is now an hour travel, some even exceeding more than an hour. The time that is used to wait for the vehicles to move causes tardiness among students, employees and businessmen alike. Aside from being tardy in school and work, the education of the students will be affected because instead of sitting behind their desks and listening to their teacher, they have to waste their valuable time sitting inside the jeepneys and/or private vehicles. Employees suffer even more because being late to work means another salary deduction and to think this doesn't happen in one day, this happens frequently, if not every day.

A birds eye view of vehicles trying and competing to turn.

         The government and concerned agencies have been trying to solve this problem, but unfortunately the solutions don't give a long-term effect which becomes useless and the budget they used in completing the project were just put to waste. Some projects, the finished and the ongoing ones, are even the cause of traffic. The problem with some of these projects is that they are focused on fixing roads that don't need any fixing at all. In return, the roads that need attention are disregarded. The newly fixed and paved roads, on the other hand don't even last for months, some just last for weeks and are now broken.


          Another reason why fixing traffic problems still fails is that government officials are so focused on big-ticket road infrastructure projects, forgetting the basic problems: poor driver education; poorly and uncoordinated traffic enforcers; and those non-cooperative drivers. Cebu Business Club president, Gordon Alan Joseph believed that if the government focuses more on traffic management, which includes poor driver education and inconsistent enforcement of traffic laws, there will be an immediate alleviation of the traffic. Before handling the big and expensive projects, we must all start fixing the small ones so that when the construction begins at least our drivers would have the proper knowledge on what is right and wrong and what actions can cause heavy traffic.  The irresponsible actions of the drivers, as wells as the civilians, can worsen the traffic, just like in Mambaling, drivers end up fighting in order to get to the end of the bottle neck. Everyone gets to pass; this fight can only delay the flow of the traffic.

Motorists using the wrong lane to overtake jeepneys.

          For so many years, the government has offered and made projects to ease the traffic but for those number of years, the problem was never solved and actually became worse instead. A solution that they should try is to solve the drivers' irresponsible actions and their ignorance to road signs and laws. Their actions alone can cause traffic problems, even more so the build, build, build of the government. Problems such as this should be solved slowly with precise thinking to have a long-term effect and to alleviate the traffic burden.

Traffic near ongoing Mambaling underpass construction.

          Traffic is one of the problems that we are still experiencing despite the projects and solutions that our government is proposing. We should approach another tactic to solve this because no matter how many underpasses, BRT's, bridges the government builds, if our Filipino drivers and civilians continue to disregard the road signs and the law,  and if they continue to be irresponsible then the projects will be in no use and the money used simply goes to waste. We need to  remember that our population density is growing so is with our vehicular density but our land is not. We need to change something that we can actually change; those are the bad habits of our drivers adding weight to our daily traffic woes.