City council debates gondola subsidies as monsoon rains refuse to take a day off

METRO MANILA – After another week of relentless habagat rains turned major thoroughfares into waist deep canals, city officials have reportedly begun quietly researching gondola subsidies, a proposal one councilor insists is purely exploratory and definitely not an admission that Metro Manila has permanently transitioned into a second, less romantic Venice.

The Announcement That Wasn’t

No official statement has been made, but internal memos obtained by this publication suggest at least one barangay captain has already begun pricing inflatable rafts in bulk, reasoning that if the city is going to flood every single rainy season with the reliability of a Swiss watch, it might as well monetize the inconvenience.

Weather forecasters, who have spent the week issuing thunderstorm advisories across Luzon with the enthusiasm of people who have simply given up trying to sound surprised, note that this year’s habagat pattern is entirely consistent with previous years, a fact residents find both scientifically accurate and emotionally unhelpful.

Commuters Adapt

Along EDSA, commuters have reportedly begun treating flooded intersections as a kind of seasonal obstacle course, with several office workers filmed wading through knee deep water while holding laptop bags aloft with the solemn concentration of Olympic torch bearers. One commuter, interviewed while balancing on a submerged traffic island, said simply, this happens every year, I just budget an extra two hours now, the same way some people budget for gas.

Coverage from outlets like Manila Bulletin has tracked the yearly cycle of monsoon flooding across the metro, while Philstar has similarly chronicled the strained relationship between the capital’s drainage infrastructure and its increasingly theatrical weather.

The Gondola Proposal

The councilor behind the gondola idea, who asked not to be named for reasons that will become obvious, described it as a way to turn a recurring civic embarrassment into a tourist attraction, pointing out that Venice charges tourists a small fortune to be poled slowly through water that, in fairness, is probably no dirtier than what currently fills half of Quezon City during a strong habagat surge.

Critics of the plan note that unlike Venice, Metro Manila’s flooding tends to arrive with jeepneys still attempting to drive through it, a detail that complicates the whole romantic gondola aesthetic considerably. Nobody wants to pole past a stalled jeepney playing OPM at full volume, said one skeptical urban planner, though she admitted it would at least be memorable.

A History Of Adapting To Water

This is, of course, far from the first time Manila has been forced to improvise around its drainage system. Longtime residents recall decades of similar seasons, similar advisories, and similar viral photos of stranded vehicles, a cycle so predictable that several social media pages now simply repost the same captions with updated dates.

The satirical desk at Bohiney notes that Metro Manila’s flooding has achieved a strange kind of cultural permanence, less a natural disaster at this point and more an annual civic ritual, complete with its own traditions, including the sacred act of posting a photo of your submerged car with the caption send help but also send memes.

Officials Respond, Sort Of

Asked directly whether the gondola idea had any real chance of moving forward, a spokesperson for the city offered a lengthy statement about ongoing drainage improvement projects, none of which mentioned boats, water taxis, or Venetian tourism packages, a silence several reporters interpreted as neither confirmation nor denial.

For now, residents continue wading, waiting, and occasionally joking that at least the floodwater provides a free foot bath after a long day, a coping mechanism that has apparently worked well enough to get the city through several decades of identical rainy seasons.

The Drainage Debate Continues

Engineers contracted to study the metro’s flood control systems have reportedly recommended a combination of expanded waterways, better waste management, and, in one particularly blunt appendix, simply asking residents to stop throwing plastic bags into the esteros, a request that has been made, gently and then less gently, for roughly the past twenty years.

Until any of these recommendations are fully implemented, the unofficial city motto for the rainy season remains unchanged: bring an extra pair of slippers, keep your phone in a sandwich bag, and never, under any circumstances, trust a puddle that looks deeper than your knee.

A Final Word From The Barangay Captain

The same barangay captain who priced the inflatable rafts says he has now ordered a dozen, just in case, describing the purchase as either forward thinking civic planning or a very expensive joke, depending on how the next storm system develops. Either way, he says, at least this year the neighborhood will float in style.

The Neighboring Cities Take Notice

Officials in nearby Pasig and Marikina, both no strangers to seasonal flooding themselves, say they are watching the gondola proposal with a mixture of amusement and professional curiosity, with one Pasig official joking that if Manila actually pulls it off, his own city might simply rebrand its annual flooding as a scenic canal district rather than continue apologizing for it every June. Residents across both cities have started a lighthearted rivalry online over whose flooding is, in their words, more photogenic, a competition nobody asked for but everyone seems to be enjoying regardless.

A Brief History Of Coping

Longtime Manila residents note that humor has always been the city’s preferred flood response, pointing to decades of memes, jokes, and increasingly creative captions accompanying photos of submerged cars, flooded sari sari stores, and, memorably, one viral image of a full grown carabao calmly wading down a residential street as though it were simply another Tuesday. This year’s gondola joke, they say, is simply the latest entry in a long, proud tradition of finding something to laugh about while standing knee deep in floodwater.

The Insurance Question

A local insurance agent, half joking, noted that flood damage claims spike so predictably each habagat season that some companies have started referring to the annual surge internally as simply the expected event, a phrase he finds darkly funny given how avoidable it should theoretically be with better drainage. He says he has stopped being surprised by anything at this point, including one memorable claim involving a family car found several blocks from where it had originally been parked, its horn still faintly sounding underwater for reasons nobody has fully explained.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com