What’s become of the MMDA?

GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Is it true that top officials of Metro Manila Development Authority are presently touring the US, Mexico and South America? Is their two-week junket to cost taxpayers $200,000 (P8 million) for airfare, hotels, meals and per diem? Is the “familiarization” with other countries’ urban planning to be taken from a World Bank loan? Is there not a new austerity rule that foreign travels by government officials will be allowed only if shouldered by a foreign agency? Is it not logical that since the travel funds will be taken from the loan, then the Filipino people will in effect pay for the junket?

MMDA insiders themselves are asking these questions in wake of their agency’s deterioration. Chairman Bayani Fernando used to strictly enforce laws and sensibly improve city living. His demolition teams drove off sidewalk encroachers and reckless drivers to smoothen traffic, and point men fixed floods and garbage disposal. Of late, however, MMDA seems to be succumbing to mediocrity. Instead of putting his foot down on what’s right, Fernando has backtracked on pulling traffic-snarling provincial bus stations off EDSA. He only shrugged when metropolitan mayors restored the demolished sidewalk obstacles. Worse, his usual logical engineering solutions have given way to zany ideas.

Along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, for instance, MMDA has paved ultra-wide U-turn lanes where unnecessary. In the process, it choked what used to be the country’s broadest highway.

It is definitely a waste of Commonwealth’s eight lanes on each side. The U-turn slots begin with two lanes blocked off with cemented barriers. As a driver turns into the break on the road median, he will notice not an equal two lanes on the other side but three. The outermost lane is a dead lane, blocked off with more cement barriers. Next to it are the two entry lanes from the U-turn break, and these two are enclosed by cement barriers. In effect, three lanes are wiped out, leaving that portion of Commonwealth with only five remaining lanes. There are two such U-turn slots, one going back north near Batasan road, the other going back south near St. Peter’s Church. What makes the latter lane even worse is that it is adjacent to a two-lane bus loading-unloading bay block off by Fernando’s trademark pink fence. In that zone, only three of eight lanes remain for motorists going south from Bulacan or Novaliches to the Quezon Memorial Circle.

Why did MMDA do such thing? For weeks I tried to interview Fernando on my Saturday radio show Sapol (DWIZ 882-AM), but he was always too busy to talk. MMDA general manager Robert Nacianceno obliged, but didn’t know what was going on with their Commonwealth project. I requested him to take a look at the wasted lanes, since vehicles hardly U-turn on the two slots even on rush hours. I wonder if he did.

And yet, all these years, MMDA has not done what Commonwealth has been waiting for: the simple painting of lane markers. Fernando has been preaching that metro drivers practice road discipline and courtesy by sticking to their lane instead of weaving in and out of lanes. But how can they if there are no lane markers to designate the lanes?

And then there’s the ubiquitous kumpas brigade that Fernando has tolerated. These are “traffic enforcers” who know nothing about the rules of driving or the Laws of Motion, yet keep waving motorists to move on although traffic is congested for miles. Look busy, as they say. Hay naku.

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Urbanites aching to get away from it all should consider three-day breaks to Bukidnon or Camiguin. Both provinces are accessible via Cagayan de Oro City, in the heart of Misamis Oriental, another vacation spot. There’s also the new scenic Bu-Da (Bukidnon-Davao) Road from Davao City.

Being a high plateau, Bukidnon has cool weather, a welcome escape from the crowded metropolis. Among the places to see are the Manobo villages, the monastery in Malaybalay, and the Del Monte steak house.

Listing all of Camiguin’s vistas would use up this entire space. Since it is an island with seven volcanoes, it features white-sand beaches, hot springs, crater lakes, waterfalls, eruption ruins — and sumptuous seafood.

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For a better understanding of the archipelagic baselines issue, one must consider Scarborough Shoal separately from the disputed Spratlys. Scarborough is made up of over two-dozen rocks and reefs, some above water even on high tide, spread out over 150 sq km of sea. Less than 120 miles west of Luzon, it is officially called Panatag Shoal in RP maritime maps. Old-timers in Zambales province have always known it as Masinloc Baja, the islets where fishermen rest and repair their boats. It takes 10 to 14 hours to reach it by ordinary outrigger banca.

China is trying to claim Scarborough supposedly as its Zhongsha Isles, based on a 1935 record. But Zambales folk have been stopping by the isles since the Spanish and American regimes. There used to be a Philippine lighthouse on the biggest rock. China asserted its claim only in 1995, after the US Navy left Subic Base in Zambales in 1990. Before that, the US and RP navies conducted exercises there.

Commodore Carlos Agustin, National Defense College president, has written extensively on Scarborough’s history as a Philippine possession. He laments that the 1898 Treaty of Paris omitted the shoal when Spain ceded the archipelago to America. In 1992 the Coast Guard rehabilitated the lighthouse and reported it to the International Maritime Organization for publication in the List of Lights.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an islet that’s mostly visible only on low tide may be used as a territorial base point if it contains a lighthouse or other permanent structures. The lighthouse has since toppled into the waters. But the RP Navy deliberately grounded a vessel there to serve as the required permanent structure.

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E-mail: jariusbondoc@workmail.com