…and I am still stuck in traffic
I admire the patience of the President.
P-Noy, as he now prefers to be called according to his newly-minted Press Secretary, bravely declared in his inauguration “wala ng wang-wang, wala ng counterflow”, and his statement was instantly picked up by a press ravenous for news bites.
In the succeeding days, we heard about how P-Noy was late for a presidential appointment after getting stuck in traffic, and how his Vice President brazenly disregarded his most recent popular statement by doing a counter-flow in a one-way street and ignoring stop signs. Still, P-Noy chose to forego the perks with being Number 1 in our country.
Like most ordinary citizens, I met the “no wang-wang” policy with glee. I have been a victim, numerous times, of bullies on the road who parted traffic like Moses parted the Red Sea, and who did so simply by being armed with that bleating, high-pitched siren that seemed more powerful than a God-given rod in Manila’s smoke belched streets. I was small fry – a mere speck – in the ocean teeming with big fish.
These self-styled VIPs, I told myself, often had a golf or masseuse appointment which they deemed more urgent than the daily grind I had to face as a mere taxpayer of the Philippines. Often I was livid, but at the same time I felt extremely powerless over the way these government officials and politicians ignored my own indignity of suffering through traffic that moved at a snail’s pace.
Today, I saw the stash of sirens being added to daily by Traffic Groups from all major cities in the Philippines. Except for official police mobiles and ambulances, the wang-wangs have gone silent indeed.
But I am still stuck in traffic.
As an urban planner, I realized yet again the universality of the basic principles of land transportation that have yet to be addressed ever since Ford mass produced the automobile: for traffic to flow smoothly, roads have to be of adequate size and condition, and the rate of flow should be commensurate to the number of vehicles taking that route from point A to point B.
I also realized, every single day, at how these commonsensical principles have consistently been ignored. And the indicator that I use is how long I am stuck in a convoy of vehicles that I don’t want to belong to – including an LPG delivery truck, two trisiboats with payongs, a mobile ice cream cart with matching jingle, one pick up truck, ten swerving jeepneys and two, extra-large sports utility vehicles that threaten to go from zero to sixty in five seconds as soon as the light turns green.
For the record, I do not mind at all if P-Noy uses a wang-wang. I sincerely believe a President has more important things to do than get stuck in traffic while the fate of the nation literally rests on his hands. However, if there is a necessity for someone of his stature to use a siren to keep his appointments, then it is also undeniable that there is something very wrong. What is wrong is the state of traffic congestion in the urban areas of our nation. Even the Davao situation is beginning to border on being unbearable.
We’ve seen how concerned agencies have jumped on Noynoy’s statement: it seems they’ve caught every vehicle with a wang-wang. So maybe the next logical step is for him to use his mandate and the eagerness of people to follow his orders to address what really needs to be fixed: the sorry state of our roads, the lack of discipline of most PUJ and taxi drivers and the seeming ineptitude of traffic enforcers who sometimes just look at violations rather than facilitate the flow of vehicles.
If we think of the President as a doctor, then he should be treating the illness and not the symptoms. Only then will we see the day when nobody, nobody needs to use a wang-wang to keep an appointment.
Feel free to send your comments to nic_agustin@yahoo.com.
