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TRAFFIC CONGESTION negatively affects EVERYONE especially the road users including private cars motorists and commuters, whether you are a driver, conductor, licensed broker or a doctor, engineer, driver, job applicant, teacher, student, saleslady, call center agent, government employee etc etc.. The only ones who are happy from traffic congestion are sidewalk/street vendors and petroleum retailers.
ODD/EVEN SCHEME may help in reducing the volume of cars in the short-run BUT will no longer be effective in the long run AT THE POINT when people will start making RATIONAL decision to buy extra cars na tinatawag nilang "pang-coding". Myself, for example, I have two cars, one car plate number ends in #3 that I can't use in Tuesdays and the other in #2 that I can't use in Mondays -- I can drive any day of the week. I would not buy an extra car if there is no Odd/Even scheme. Now, if you EXPAND the Odd/Even Scheme such that a certain plate number ending# will only use the streets for two days, then I will buy THREE more cars with plate numbers #5, #7, and #9 so I can drive anyday of the week.
MULTIPLIER EFFECT. If you are going to multiply my decision pattern to the over 1 Million private car owners who drive in Metro Manila, the result is devastating. Without Odd/Even Scheme, we have 1M cars. If you impose Odd/Even Scheme, you will reduce the cars in the streets by 20-40% in the short run but there will be a point in the future when everyone affected will buy MORE CARS, and the bottomline result is a 1M persons owning 5M cars. The multiplier effect is a negative impact of Odd-Even Scheme that is IRREVERSIBLE. Only an atomic bomb can reduce the number of cars in Metro Manila.
Is this MULTIPLIER EFFECT realistic? Yes my dear, it is already happening! I will prove it to you in 4 ways below:
1. Using myself as an example, I have two cars so I can still drive kahit coding.
2. See the residential villages in the evening, you can see cars parked in the garage and many cars parked outside the house at the roadside. It means that the people are having multiple cars, just lke me.
4. Look at the Cars Section of the Buy and Sell magazine, you will see that car advertisers indicate the ending of the plate# of the cars they sell because it primarily targets buyers of extra car for coding purpose.
5. There is no coding in Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays, but there is still traffic congestion because you have all the 5M cars on the street -- my wife drives my first car and I drive my second car -- and every family does the same thing.
The solution to traffic congestion is YOU HAVE TO SPREAD DEVELOPMENT TO THE PROVINCES! I can talk about MANY WAYS on how to stimulate real estate development to the provinces, but I will only cite TWO.
1. TELECOMMUNICATION. The most effective I can think of is that PLDT holds the ONE MAGICAL PILL. If PLDT will interconnect and localize all zones of the country (local call lang if you call from province to Matro Manila), development will surely go sidewards to the provinces. I PROMISE you that.
2. HI-RISE MORATORIUM IN METROPOLIS. There should be a moratorium of high-rise development in the Metropolis until they figure out the correct tri-legged proportion of growth of (1) Parking Spaces, (2) Fly-overs, and (3) Residential/Commercial High-Rises. These three has grow EVENLY in correct proportion. You build fly-overs and parking spaces first BEFORE you gradually release the hi-rise build-up moratorium.
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I dedicate this blog to my FB friends who celebrate their birthdays today.
Aida Rama- Bly, Angus Kerr, Annie Kieth Salvaña Librando, Charisse Ribo, Dandreb Dela Cruz, Gina Pareno, Hannaha Afuafuo, Jeliaskenn E. Matsunaga, Jeremy Orange M. Ejercito, Lorena Bernadez, Maricel Escultura, Paul Anthony Balaoro, Ruby T. Beltran
