Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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So, the way I’d handle the traffic thing (in addition to the promised fixed salary for bus drivers and removal of colorums) is to try to reduce yung number of cars on the roads in conjunction with improving public transportation. I’d add taxes on cars used in Metro Manila (as in may sticker for cars that have paid the tax; no sticker = no driving in Metro Manila, and stickers have to be renewed every X years, and cars that are too old won’t get renewed) the funds earned can be used to pay for better public transpo. I’d add an additional train line along C5 parallel to MRT3 and probably another one on the other side of EDSA somewhere - public transpo needs to get to the point where everyone, even car owners would be more comfortable taking public transpo. Sorry to car-owning friends, but if we keep adding more vehicles, we’re going to end up like that Indian city with parking problems everywhere.

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Comments

David Ramirez
David Ramirez
Mmm. The car part of your plan is okay, except it punishes the middle class. Those with the money can ignore it, essentially, at little cost. It really only reduces the volume of families that can only afford to keep one old car going, borderline middle class families. The biggest thing that would help is an extensive rail system like NY's subway (or the London tube, or Tokyo), where there are stations every few blocks and many crisscrossing lines and transfer points for extensive coverage, but it would take decades and cost billions. But in building it, we could also vastly improve the drainage system for the entire Metro Manila area (because we'd need it to keep the trains from being out of service for the entire rainy season), so it would be a dual-purpose public works project. In the near term, there are just no easy solutions =P
Roy Tang
Roy Tang
The car tax is inspired by the London Congestion Charge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
David Ramirez
David Ramirez
Oh, I'm not saying it's a bad idea at all, just that it won't actually have that much of an effect on traffic for us, except for those who can't afford it. It's good for generating revenue. It would only reduce traffic significantly if it was a seriously steep fee though, in which case cars would be reserved for the pretty well off… which would in turn reduce the revenue from the fees… and be considered kinda classist.
Roy Tang
Roy Tang
Dave since you mentioned the London tube, I was conversing earlier with some guys from the UK and they told me the tube is also super congested and that it gets really hot even during winter because a lot of the heat isn't dissipated underground. This post doesn't have a point
David Ramirez
David Ramirez
Yeah, some problems can only be fixed by massive amounts of money. A really nice rail system for us will have to include air-conditionin g because it gets so hot here, it would have to incorporate major drainage/sewer improvements to keep them from being flooded out every couple of weeks during rainy season, we'd need those safety doors that only open when the train is in the station to prevent jerks from pushing people onto the rails, etc. Oh, and they'd have to be seismic safe and reinforced =P Or create impetus that migrates some jobs and educational centers to the provinces, to decrease the economic singularity effect of the NCR region =P Also a big deal… BTW, Liza and I do plan to eventually move to Pampanga… Edit: Huh, this post seemed to vanish for me. Then it came back! Weird!
David Ramirez
David Ramirez
A high tech, fine granularity version of that congestion charge would be nice. Like all cars would have a unit built in, and you get automatically charged for different fee zones only if using them and only while you're using them.
Ritchie Tiongson
Ritchie Tiongson
I believe in Beijing (or some Chinese city) there's a law that limits the number of vehicles per household as well as per person. We could add that too.
Mylee Ejercito
Mylee Ejercito
The answer is decentralizatio n.
Cole Fabros
Cole Fabros
roytang4preside nt2040
Jon Limjap
Jon Limjap
The London congestion charge sounds fine, but their public transport was already top motch before it was put in place. Besides, it onlmy applies to central London which is really just the size of Quezon City. Tiny area really. Where to apply it here?
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