A national directive to clear streets of private use encounters a basketball court, a wake and Aling Nena’s eatery
Road Clearing Drive Finds That the Philippine Street Is Not a Road but a Living Room
CALOOCAN – Every few years a national leader looks at the capital’s streets and issues the same instruction: take them back. The most quoted version is recorded in AutoIndustriya’s report on the presidential order to reclaim and clear all public roads, which recounts a State of the Nation Address in which mayors and governors were told to recover every public road being used for private ends or face suspension, and which cites the estimate that the country loses 3.5 billion pesos a day to Metro Manila traffic.
In Bagong Barrio, the directive arrived at a street that was at that moment hosting a basketball game, a vulcanizing shop, eleven parked tricycles, a karaoke session, two sleeping dogs and a wake. “They said clear the road,” said barangay kagawad Florencio Dalisay. “I said, which part is the road? Show me. This is the plaza, the parking, the court, the market, the funeral chapel and the children’s playground. If I clear it there will be a road, yes. But there will be no barangay.”
An Inventory of the Obstructions
The Monumento Institute for Street-Level Studies sent a team to document a single 200-meter stretch. Its report, titled “What Is On It,” runs to nine pages. A partial list:
- One basketball hoop welded to a drum filled with concrete, immovable since 2011
- Aling Nena’s carinderia, four tables, serving the clearing team’s own lunch
- A tent for a wake, with a bingo game, entering its sixth night
- A jeepney under repair for so long it has a mailing address
- Potted plants placed specifically to reserve parking
- A barangay outpost, itself on the road
Institute researcher Dr. Marivic Tolentino said the difficulty is conceptual. “The order assumes the street was taken from the public,” she said. “But the public is who took it. They are using it very efficiently. Every square meter has three functions. The only thing it cannot do is carry traffic, which, to be fair, was the original idea.”
The Sixty-Day Miracle
Mayors were given deadlines, and for a time the results were visible. Vendors vanished. Sidewalks appeared that residents had forgotten existed. One man in Tondo reportedly saw the pavement outside his own house for the first time and asked who had put it there. Then, by a process the Institute calls natural recolonization, the stalls returned, first one, then four, then the hoop.
A survey of 320 residents found that 81 percent support clearing the roads, 77 percent oppose clearing the particular thing they themselves have on the road, and 69 percent said the wake should be exempt “out of respect, and because of the bingo.”
Where Do the Cars Go
The deeper problem is arithmetic. Many households own a vehicle and no garage. A proposal to require proof of parking before purchase has circulated for years. Until it passes, the street is the garage. Enforcement has also become more uniform, with the Manila Bulletin’s archive noting the region’s cities adopting a common traffic code and harmonized penalties, so an illegally parked car now receives the same ticket in every city, a comfort the owner is said to feel deeply.
Dalisay said he has tried compromise. The basketball hoop is rolled aside during rush hour, in theory. The karaoke ends at ten, in theory. The potted plants were removed and replaced by different potted plants. “We are law-abiding,” he said. “We just have many things and one street.”
The Clearing Team’s Lunch
Operations continue. A team arrived on Tuesday with a truck, a loudspeaker and a list. They dismantled two stalls, issued several warnings and photographed the results for the report. At noon they ate at Aling Nena’s, which they had been sent to remove. She gave them extra rice. The eatery was recorded as “for further evaluation.” It was still there on Friday.
The Hoop’s Legal Status
Particular attention has been paid to the basketball hoop, which three successive clearing operations have failed to move. Its concrete base weighs an estimated 400 kilos. It has survived two typhoons and a garbage truck. Dalisay said the barangay has offered to relocate it “as soon as someone can lift it.” A team with a boom truck was scheduled for last month. It arrived during the semifinals of the inter-purok league and was asked to wait until after the game. It was a close game. They stayed for overtime.
Britain Understands, It Has Wheelie Bins
The struggle resonates in the United Kingdom, where the pavement is contested by bins, scooters, cafe tables and one man’s hedge. The London Prat’s London satirical news pavement politics covered a Hackney street where residents reserve parking with traffic cones “inherited from their fathers.” Its English satirical news street scenes recommended the potted plant as “elegant, and harder to tow.”
By evening in Bagong Barrio the game had resumed. The wake’s bingo caller announced a number. A tricycle threaded between the hoop and the tent at walking speed, its driver nodding to everyone he passed, which was everyone. As a road it was a failure. As a street it was full. Bohiney Magazine paid its respects and lost at bingo.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/