Metro Manila Development Authority Launches Traffic Management Initiative Distinguished From Prior Initiatives by New Acronym

QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES — The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority announced a new comprehensive traffic management initiative for EDSA, the 23.8-kilometer artery that serves as Metro Manila’s main thoroughfare, primary parking lot, and most reliable source of despair. The program — which involves bus-only lanes, synchronized traffic signals, number coding enhancements, and a commitment to “holistic corridor management” — is expected to reduce EDSA travel times by 30 percent within six months, an estimate that traffic engineers call “optimistic” and daily commuters call “something they have heard before.” Satirical commentary from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

EDSA traffic has been described as a crisis requiring urgent intervention by every MMDA chairman since the position was created in 1995. Each administration has introduced signature traffic solutions that have reduced average EDSA travel times temporarily, seasonally, or in pilot stretches, before conditions returned to a baseline that the MMDA measures in hours and commuters measure in the phases of their children’s lives that elapsed during the journey.

A Brief Taxonomy of Previous EDSA Solutions

The solutions implemented on EDSA over the past three decades constitute a comprehensive survey of traffic management theory applied to conditions that traffic management theory did not anticipate. These include: the yellow lane, the carousel bus system, the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (number coding), the expanded number coding scheme, the special number coding exemption scheme, the suspension of number coding, the reimposition of number coding, dry run operations for the MRT, MRT operations, MRT suspension for maintenance, MRT resumption of operations, and the yellow lane again.

Each initiative was accompanied by press releases projecting significant travel time reductions. The MMDA website maintains archives of these announcements with a thoroughness that inadvertently documents the agency’s relationship with optimism.

What Actually Moves People on EDSA

The EDSA Busway — implemented during the pandemic when vehicle traffic was minimal and has since been partially reclaimed by cars in a process the MMDA calls “corridor management” and bus drivers call “not how this was supposed to work” — remains the most significant single improvement to EDSA transit in decades. On days when it functions as designed, the busway moves meaningful volumes of passengers in dedicated lanes at speeds that approach what EDSA would look like if everyone who drives a car alone decided to take a bus, which they have not decided.

The fundamental constraint on EDSA is not signal timing or lane discipline or number coding. It is the volume of private vehicles relative to road capacity, a ratio that has deteriorated steadily as car ownership increased and public transit investment lagged. The Land Transport Authority of Singapore resolved this problem by making driving in a city expensive, inconvenient, and unnecessary through a combination of electronic road pricing, world-class mass transit, and restrictive vehicle ownership policy. This solution is available to Metro Manila in theory and has been recommended by transport experts in approximately every transport study commissioned since 2000.

The 30 Percent Reduction Promise

The new MMDA initiative projects a 30 percent travel time reduction, which on an average EDSA journey of 90 minutes would produce a 63-minute journey. This would still be longer than the same journey in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta (on a good day), and most comparable Asian cities with functional mass transit. It would, however, be shorter than the current 90 minutes, which is an improvement, and improvements deserve acknowledgment even when the baseline that makes them improvements is itself a management failure.

“We are committed to making EDSA work for commuters,” the MMDA chairman said, in a statement that would be indistinguishable from any MMDA chairman statement since 1995 if not for the specific reference to the new acronym attached to this initiative. The acronym has been embroidered on polo shirts for the launch event.

What Commuters Actually Do

Metro Manila commuters, who have survived every previous EDSA solution through a combination of resilience, motorcycle taxis, and the studied stoicism of people who have learned not to trust press releases about travel times, received the new initiative with the specific equanimity of those who have seen this movie before. They will continue leaving two hours earlier than necessary. They will continue developing optimized route combinations that bypass EDSA entirely. They will continue spending two to four hours of each working day in transit. They will note any improvements with genuine appreciation and without surprise if the improvements don’t hold.

The polo shirts are nice, several commuters agreed. The polo shirts are always nice.

More traffic management innovations: NewsThump.

What Would Actually Work

Transport researchers and urban planners who have studied Metro Manila traffic have a consistent prescription: reduce the cost of driving, increase the quality of alternatives, and enforce both systematically over a period of years. The electronic road pricing systems used in Singapore and Stockholm, which charge drivers for road use during peak hours, have demonstrably reduced congestion in every city that has implemented them seriously. The bus rapid transit model, implemented properly with fully protected lanes and reliable schedules, moves three to four times as many passengers per lane as private vehicles. Metro Manila has pieces of both approaches and has not implemented either at the scale needed to change the fundamental equation. The MMDA’s new initiative is better than nothing. It is also not Singapore. The polo shirts remain optimistic.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/