| 09.26.2019 – The month of September is almost done and as the day goes by traffic has become far worse than you’ll ever think to live in a densely populated area in the Philippines.
Every day it has become part of the daily grind for most Filipinos living in a city as things have become gloriously terrible by the hour. If the local mass transportation has not evolved in the last two decades and the dwindling sidewalks that include proper pick-up points were not enough to be taken out by road widening projects. Then things get more horrible than the usual horror stories you encounter every day while on the road in this part of the country. |
For those not keeping track, the Philippines is the third worse country in Southeast Asia to be ever included in the list for traffic problems and ranking twelfth all over the world must be the kind of nightmares you’ll ever live every day. This is according to NUMBEO site that tracks traffic index in real-time.
Talk about living in Metro Manila is not getting better every day not only dealing with the daily challenges of commuting from one city to another. But also the challenges of dealing with people during commutes are one of the unhealthiest factors of why anxiety is at an all-time high.
Not only that but the stress that comes with all that Filipino drama that comes with how others behave inappropriately, while others take advantage of the situation with some certain individuals posing as beggars and those who are asking for solicitation like it’s already considered a crime that reflects how society in this country has gotten far worse than the last decade. But this is just one of the factors of the stress and anxiety that has something to do with traffic. The main story here is the terrible mismanagement and incompetence of those who handle the situation why the daily commutes have become the stuff nightmares are made of.
Un-Heavenly Ride
Nathaniel Bus Line is probably the only reliable service that travels from Makati City to a part of Manila which is in Quiapo. There are other public vehicles that offer the same service, but the transport fee is not the same as a conventional ride through the LRT 1 trains or through a regular jeepney.
If you travel to Makati to Quiapo you’ll need to take two public modes of transport namely a Jeepney to Gil Puyat (formerly Buendia) and catching a train from the LRT 1 (Light Rail Transit) Station. But with the Nathaniel Bus Line, it cuts the time to get off the jeepney and go up the stairs of the Gil Puyat station.
But that’s not the case anymore with the “Ber” Months as the travel time hours have doubled. It is not as convenient anymore compared to the past five years. Taking the Nathaniel Bus Line on a Thursday earlier was an unpredictable and slow crawl experience that wasn’t as heavenly as it was when the ride started.
Sardined by the Quota
The major problem about ANY public utility or transport is the “Quota Mentality” as the more people packed one bus or jeepney that you can’t breathe anymore its more incentive money for the driver or conductor it is unlike taking the Adelaide Metro Bus in South Australia where they are on the clock and must leave for the next stop in less than a minute.
This is one of the factors why congestion builds up regardless if it is along Taft Avenue or EDSA. It is not only the volume of buses or jeepneys that travel through these routes it is how long they take so much time filling up the passengers. It is obvious that they would say “it is part of the business” when it is also part of the problem why traffic builds up to a halt because each stop they try to get more passengers than moving to another stop.
Besides that, the proper pick-up and drop-off points in the city are not even organized properly. Even with the ones in Ayala Avenue, it is still the worse excuse to have separate pick-up points and drop-off stops. What the government should do is eliminate the “quota mentality” in all public transports and establish to fix a proper pick-up/drop-off stop. But it is easier said than done, as there would be resistance from public transport groups, that the government should have controlled this from way back when the country was still trying to build itself after the Second World War.
Getting Worse From Here
At the end of the day, it is still about the money and it will never go away as this country will never evolve, unlike Western countries that established better public transport despite some people I know who still complain about how they get dizzy taking the Adelaide Metro Bus or how some of these buses are late.
If they only knew or experience how terrible the commutes in the Philippines it would appear that they are still spoiled by the little things of convenience. Every day is certainly a nightmare from the day people wake up to the day they get back it is an anxiety-induced nightmare even the clown from IT might not handle.
The worse part of the experience is not how slow is the travel is, but how you deal with people riding the bus or getting off regarding human behavior. Majority of these faceless individuals are unapologetic, entitled, and far worse are like zombies grappled to their mobile phones like there is no care at all whoever they elbowed or hit them with their bags. Some of them are obviously ignorant to the rule to disregard the signs of no eating, the way they dispose of their rubbish, and how they sit inappropriately inside a bus or a jeepney like they are in a hotel lounge.
This is how every day happens in my daily commute, but for this one taking the Nathaniel Bus Line would probably not the most convenient way to travel to work in the middle of the day. Yes, it is Thursday but it is also not an excuse why you have to deal with urban animals misbehaving for the reason it’s a horror story that you should not add to the stress of traveling every day.
So what’s your Traffic Horror Story? Leave a comment or a reaction surely, there’s a story there that’s far worse than you’ve read here.
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