Metro’s monstrous traffic jam MMDA’S TOLENTINO MUST LEARN FROM DAVAO CITY’S DUTERTE

By Al S.Mendoza

Business Mirror

INSTEAD of fixing the traffic mess that has been hounding Metro Manilans for years now, Francis Tolentino is busy doing other things.

Isn’t he chairman of the MMDA (Metropolitan Manila Development Autority)? And as such, it is his primary duty to untangle the almost daily traffic snarls in the Big City?

If he has lost interest in the job, he should resign. Now.

My legman keeps telling me the MMDA chief loves to go out of town—confirmed no less by hard-hitting radio-TV hot shot Ted Failon—virtually leaving his turf to subalterns who are also not keen on making the metropolis fit for habitat 24/7.

I don’t actually care where Tolentino is going, even as my other spies tell me he is now on the campaign trail for his perceived senate shot in the May 2016 polls.

Fine. This is a free country, anyway.

But then, does he have to pursue his personal ambitions at the expense of the woes of our motorists in their daily city grind, where traffic entanglements are now causing the country almost a whopping P2 billion daily in lost business opportunities and vehicle fuel going up in smoke?

2 HOURS TO REACH MAKATI

TODAY, it has become ordinary for travel from Quezon City to Makati taking two hours at the very least—and the distance is not even 40 km at the most!

Look, from my Q.C. home to my birthplace of Mangatarem, Pangasinan, is exactly 177 km—and I cover it in only about three hours! When there isn’t traffic at SM Mall in Tarlac, I could negotiate it from 2-1/2 hours to 2-3/4 hours.

Whenever there is a vehicle jam at Edsa, practically no MMDA traffic enforcer is immediately in sight—as in the Cubao area, particularly Aurora Blvd. which is always in chaos due to buses and jeepneys and taxis just waiting for passengers in complete disregard of motorists continuously stalled, stuck, behind them.

If you see an MMDA dude there at all, he does nothing but turn a blind eye on jeepneys parked practically in the middle of Aurora Blvd.—and these utilities will only leave once they are packed with passengers.

You call the attention of the MMDA man in blue of the traffic gridlock at Aurora and, chances are, he will just give you a smirk and walk away as if you never existed at all.

LITTERED WITH GRIDLOCKS

EDSA from Monumento to Baclaran is actually littered with gridlocks, one of which is the Nepa Q Mart area approaching Aurora Blvd., aggravated by the presence of bus stations on both sides of “Highway 54.”

That is a known choke point all these years and yet, you rarely see a Tolentino traffic enforcer manning it, from Monday to Sunday.

How can Tolentino hope to win a Senate seat in May, if he should crazily make a stab at it all, if he is a failure in his main job of putting road order in Metro Manila—let alone Edsa?

Over at Commonwealth Avenue Q.C., there is always this MMDA group, also all clad in blue, assembled under the Tandang Sora Flyover. One of them has a camera trained at oncoming vehicles, recording speeds. At his signal, his buddies would hail pronto a vehicle going past 60 kph. God knows what happens next as the poor driver tries to wiggle his way out of kotong trappers.

SOURCE OF CORRUPTION

WHILE I agree on the 60 kph rule there—it was adopted, some years back, following the death of my fellow journalist-friend Chit Estela while on board a cab that was hit by a speeding bus near Technohub—the manner of its implementation has now become the object of derision. Why, because it has become a source of corruption—and abuse by MMDA personnel. As if Tolentino doesn’t know?

And what is this that he had done only recently: Ask the Supreme Court to ban smoking in public in the metropolis.

Of course, it was thumbed down outright after it was deemed unmeritorious.

Who does Tolentino think he is, Mayor Duterte of Davao?

5TH SAFEST IN THE WORLD

IN Davao, Duterte rules that is why public smoking in that fifth safest city in the world is banned.

That is why it is no surprise that millions have been clamoring for Duterte to run for President in May because of his no-nonsense style of leadership in the world’s biggest city that is Davao, land-wise.

If Duterte should finally make a go of it—he is still pondering about it, with the deadline of filing for candidacy on October 31 yet—and God would will a Duterte victory, I guess the country would merely be an enlarged Davao City: Good life brought about by a low crime rate, investors rushing in because, partly, of a traffic system that is pro-motorist, pro-tourist and never personal interest-intensive.

Do you know that Duterte rides his own big bike, drives around Davao incognito, and personally helps make city driving for his constituents smooth and easy, instilling in them a trouble-free cruise and without fear of being victims of corrupt traffic enforcers. He would not only fire a cop caught mulcting a motorist right there and there—he’d also kick the cop in the ass first.

In the almost six years that Tolentino has been MMDA top banana, I have yet to see him personally conduct traffic operations in the metropolis—even if only for show.

And he wants—even if only allegedly—to be a senator of the republic?

God, have mercy.