This is an e-mail sent to us last Friday:
Dear Herman,
The first few weeks of Mayor Erap offered much encouragement for all of us Manilans, for example:
1) The daily horrific traffic jam in front of City Hall that reaches all the way to the MacArthur, Quiapo and Jones bridges was solved immediately the first few days of Mayor Erap in office;
2) The monstrous bottleneck in Divisoria and J. Abad Santos Ave. disappeared overnight;
3) The squatters' vehicles blocking the exit of the Paco to V. Mapa bridge area were towed away today;
4) The removal of provincial PUBs from our city's streets is being enforced; and many other actions.
Congratulations!
But we seniors have a new complaint to report to you. Please bring this to Mayor Erap. Since last week, SM Cinema has tried to limit the attendance of all senior Manilians by making all its movie houses run on single showings only; thus, forcing all of us seniors to wait two to three hours outside the movie houses until the next showing. This has the effect of forcing many of us to abandon seeing the movie, as time is very precious to people like us. Mayor Erap standing up for us seniors will make all senior citizens lifetime loyalists even if time is running out for us.
More power to you.
Victor.
May I add that even jeepney drivers passing through the Lawton area are all praises, as the traffic jams there that limit their turn around trips have been cleared of the huge bus build-ups that literally dam up the complex intersection where traffic from four bridges and two major arterials roads converge. An overwhelming proportion of Manilans believes they are winners in President-Mayor Joseph Estrada's decisive action to free Manila's streets of colorum and non-Manila-based provincial buses, as well as other road obstacles such as illegally parked vehicles. But there are also those who feel they are on the losing end, such as the many commuters from Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan and Quezon City, who, in trying to reach the very center of the metropolis, are compelled to drop off at the boundaries of the City of Manila.
A classmate of my son at De La Salle University — Manila complains that he now has to walk from the World Trade Center at the junction of Roxas Blvd. and Buendia all the way to the university. Before the ban, the bus that he takes brings him all the way to the gates of DLSU before it proceeds toward Plaza Lawton. Now, he has to take two jeepney rides from WTC to DLSU that would cost an extra P16, which his daily allowance cannot afford anymore. My heart goes out to such "casualties" in the decision to unclog Manila's roads by cutting the buses at the boundaries; but it was an action that was sorely needed and has proven so far to be the long needed impetus to energize the country toward solving real problems.
The problematic situation of hapless commuters, such as that DLSU student coming from Cavite to Taft-Vito Cruz, is not something that Manila City Hall alone can solve. That problem requires a higher level of coordination and consultation, which has not been on the agenda of any Yellow administration since 1986.
Edsa Uno emaciated the Metro Manila Commission (MMC) — created in 1975 by President Ferdinand Marcos and headed by then First Lady Imelda Marcos — by changing it to the Metro Manila Authority and, later, the Metro Manila Development Authority as it stands today. With the weakening of the MMC's powers, centralized planning and coordination also eroded. Chaos and impasse in Metro Manila's traffic infrastructure planning and policy-making soon ensued.
It has taken someone like Erap to break the impasse, so much so that now, all Metro Manila mayors and concerned authorities are compelled to start shaking their long sleeping legs. For sure, there are many other approaches to the traffic nightmares Metro Manila cities are experiencing; but only Erap as mayor has provided the decisive stimulus — and it does not stop there. As newspapers have reported, Erap's plans include the deployment of electric buses, which would hit two birds with one stone — pollution and the intra-Manila bus system. This column would also suggest two-decker buses (as Imelda Marcos had deployed in the 1970s), along appropriate routes such as Roxas Blvd. and Edsa, but this would require greater Metro-wide coordination.
A special, mandatory school-bussing program for all schools in traffic-congested areas such as Ortigas-Greenhills, Katipunan-Aurora, Ortigas-Edsa, Chinatown, among many readily identifiable places is also recommended; and in the long term, infrastructure investment in second level and/or underpass roadways.
What President-Mayor Joseph Estrada has highlighted most of all is that what is needed to break the impasse and paralysis of previously perceived intractable problems is "leadership."
Yes, it's that simple. Erap — no darling of the highfaluting Edsa Uno and Dos crowds — is no "economist" like Gloria Arroyo and doesn't speak French like the late Cory Aquino. Neither is he a West Point graduate like Fidel Ramos. But he solves problems that none of these darlings of the "respectable" crowds have ever tried to do. One can only surmise Erap's immense positive contributions to the country if he was never ousted from the presidency — or if his return to executive power was never thwarted by Hocus-PCOS.
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