What! Metro traffic losses amount to P2.5 billion a day?

Have you gotten another dressing-down from the boss for being late again? How about missing your first subject  because the two-hour travel time you allotted from home to school proved not enough?  But let’s go beyond the personal inconveniences of motorists and commuters by quantifying the real economic losses arising from the daily traffic jams. The numbers culled by the National Center for Transportation Studies of the University of the Philippines (UP) are mind-boggling.

According to a paper by Dr. Jose Regin Regidor of the NCTS, about P137 billion a year is lost from unrealized earnings or man-hour losses in Metro Manila alone. Wasted fuel, on the other hand, adds up to P4.2 billion. The P137 billion can build 274,000 socialized housing units at a cost of P500,000 per dwelling. The P4.2 billion can buy 2,200,526 50-kilo sacks of rice that can feed the poorest of the poor among Filipinos.

For the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the losses due to Metro Manila’s traffic jams are costing the Philippine economy P2.5 billion a day in potential income, a figure which it said could rise up to P6 billion a day by 2030.  JICA’s estimate of P576 billion in losses each was even bigger than the P400 billion allocated by the national government for infrastructure projects like roads, bridges and buildings for 2014.

Clearly, the stop-gap measures being implemented by the Metro Manila Development Authority and local government units (LGUs) are not enough to ease heavy traffic in the metropolis.

What is needed is for the national government to tap the private sector in designing and implementing a mass transport system that truly works, like what we see in Singapore for example. The government can start by ripping the old tracks of the dilapidated MRT and LRT and decommissioning all of their train wagons that have seen better days. Then lay down new tracks, buy new wagons and set in place a maintenance regimen that would ensure the railways systems work 24/7. -end-               

Image by Philippine Star