Traffic Situation: Transportation In The Philippines

Going from one place to another here in Metro Manila is really a pain. It takes too much effort and time in going places. The 15 minute travel time doubles and sometimes triple due to the heavy traffic. Which takes too much of your time. The time that you can allot to a more important and meaningful things. Because of this you can’t maximize the day to do your chores. Making your 1-day schedule of chores into two or more days.

Transportation here in the Philippines is usually a battle of the fittest. Whether it be a commute to work or a drive to work. Workers and students struggle to make it to their destinations. According to Ben Gritz in Manila time “due to a critical lack of public transportation vehicles, some commuters wait up to two hours for a ride” after the commuters struggle to a ride they get cramped up in a space for an hour or more in traffic. The number of commuters greatly outnumbers the available vehicle to the general public.

People nowadays choose to purchase an automotive to be saved from the horrors of commuting. You can’t really blame them for adding more cars on the street because they prefer to be stuck in traffic in a comfortable vehicle than to wait in line for a public transport then wait another hour or more in traffic in a cramped space. According to Many Villar “In 2016 a total of 11.2 million motor vehicles were registered with the Land Transportation Office (LTO), of which 2.5 million (28.7 percent) were in the National Capital Region (NCR) and 8.7 million (71.27 percent) were in other parts of the country”.

Owning a vehicle today is not a luxury anymore, it is becoming more of a need. As the number of people are turning into vehicles the motor companies now are eyeing this as a chance to sell more of their products. According to Top Gear Philippines, “ you can own a vehicle for just P10,000 or less” which is way too affordable for those who are working. This leads to more and more cars that are on the street and making the road smaller to the volume of cars that are passing it.

There are a lot of motorists which congest the 2 lanes into one and sometimes into none. Giving them a hard time to pass and clear the road. According to Brenda Vallarta of the GMA news ”The MMDA said these roads are either used as illegal parking areas or occupied by illegal vendors and/or informal settlers,” these unruly people contribute to the traffic in Metro Manila. After being cleared from the road they find ways to get back again and congest the traffic, this is the case for street vendors. As soon as the roads were cleared from bus and jeep that take too long in the loading bay and other public transport that load and unload anywhere the traffic in the area became good.