Direct Link Blog

Manila Bulletin
September 29, 2011

Recent hikes in prices of utilities, energy, VAT, tolls and fares brought out the usual noisy protests. Many of these cause-oriented groups have upped their game, getting better organized, more creative in their attention-grabbing gimmicks and more sophisticated in their rabble-rousing activist language. You can almost predict that when it comes to fuel, Shell House is in for another pasting.

Despite sober explanations from government agencies about the rationality of deregulation and the effects of globalization, there will always be parties looking for some big fish to blame and opportunist politicians meaning to polish their populist credentials.

We have made our stand clear on regional subsidies being an unfair burden on those from other regions who do not benefit. For instance, why should a fisherman from Davao, cane planter from Negros and coconut farmer in Albay subsidize the fares of the MRT? That is why Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas is right in pushing through with long-delayed fare hikes so that the MRT will not decay and instead be upgraded to increase the number of coaches.

Recently some have argued that the subsidized fares of the MRT are also a subsidy on motorists using EDSA as MRT ridership has reduced traffic. Really now?

If this is true, what did the EDSA motorist gain from this MRT subsidy? The MRT was one of those inelegant force-fit solutions to introduce a light rail option to a city lacking in through transit routes. Unlike the LRT-1, which is elevated all the way, the budget of the MRT dictated that some portions go underground, some above ground and some at grade. This resulted in EDSA motorists losing at least one lane in each direction and ended up with crooked and misaligned lanes in areas where there were stations. Considering the lame merging abilities of many generations of Filipino drivers, these misaligned portions always cause traffic jams.

Moreover, the MRT project couldn’t even “close the loop” with the LRT-1 in Monumento, leaving it to the latter to extend into EDSA in order to come close to linking with the MRT in TriNoma some day.

As if this was not enough to compound the EDSA private motorists’ problems, the ODD/EVEN scheme, which was supposed to be imposed only for the duration of MRT construction, was not lifted as promised but was replaced with the color-coding scheme. Matters were made worse for the motorist when instead of the MRT replacing the abusive and unruly buses on EDSA, buses were even given two exclusive yellow lanes to boot.

By virtue of the noise it makes and the bulk of the elevated tramway, the MRT has caused “urban blight” in some of the narrower sections of EDSA, although it is not as severe as what the LRT did to the even narrower Avenida Rizal and Taft Avenue. This blight is relatively less severe with the higher open skeleton design of LRT-2 on Aurora Blvd.

Property prices along the railways turned iffy as urban noise and reduced sunlight became an issue. Of course commercial property prices near the stations improved but along with it came the nuisance of badly planned inter-modal bus-PUJ station stops and uncontrolled sidewalk vendors.

Private motorists are actually fleeced to subsidize. The road users tax paid by them has greatly improved highway signage, safety, visibility, markings and pedestrian safety all over the country. The higher prices they pay for fuel subsidizes the cheaper and dirty fuel for the public utility sector.

If private motorists were as organized and as “angry” as the cause-oriented groups, they should be demanding their pound of flesh. If they were to truly benefit from a free-flowing EDSA because of the alleged MRT subsidy, then take those buses out. Of course this is not possible now as EDSA is the only contiguous north-south transit route for province to province traffic. C-5 and C-3 are just as congested so they do not serve as alternatives. With the amount of subsidy private motorists pay for the rest of the country, it’s about time that they get their money’s worth by demanding the lifting of color coding and the reduction of those yellow lanes.

But there may be a more holistic solution than fighting all these sectarian turf battles. Why not deregulate the fares of the transport sector? True, wildly gyrating prices are bad for stability and planning.

But if they are market-dictated, there should be no lags so therefore there would be no long delays in the service upgrades that could prevent the congestion and failures that the MRT has been experiencing for five years now. The jeepney drivers will not need to coerce their fellow jeepney drivers to strike everytime they demand an oil price rollback and raised fares.

With deregulation, government agencies will just need to prepare for the routine blitzkrieg protests of the same “usual suspects” cause-oriented groups whenever prices go up [but never when prices go down]. They can always talk to Pilipinas Shell to learn from their experience.