SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT By DR. JESUS P. ESTANISLAO Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao Each time the word “infrastructure” comes up, the imagery that readily comes to mind is “huge bucks” and “huge corruption.” These two images have to be dissociated from each other, and while “big bucks” will always be a feature of infrastructure, “big corruption” need not be. And this is where strategy embedded in good governance and responsible citizenship can make a significant difference.

• Our focus should be on strategic outcomes. Given climate change, what do we do with most of our coastal communities? What infrastructure need we undertake in order to strategically move many of our towns and cities to slightly higher ground?
• Adopt a realistic, human scale to our different human settlements by ensuring efficient and cost-effective intercommunication and connectivity between these smaller-sized, more humane districts.
• Apply the tenets of green architecture, which is deeply respectful of weather and other local environmental conditions, such that structures are properly harmonized with the natural habitat, and thereby become more economical and comfortable to operate and maintain.

The above issues and those more closely related with them are some of the big-picture issues that an outcome-oriented infrastructure strategy must address. Below these big-picture issues, there is one infrastructure-related issue that can b significantly eased through properly coordinated smaller initiatives and programs. This is the issue of traffic, which has become almost “the issue” to confront. Anna Patricia Fernandez brings up a few smaller initiatives and programs:

• With all due respect for local autonomy, the plain fact is that Metro areas are systemic. We cannot have rules in one area or city different from rules in another area or city of the same metropolis. Moreover, “road signs have to be consistent” and they should be “placed in areas where they can be easily read, so as not to confuse people.” Then, traffic rules have to be enforced in the same professional manner throughout a metropolitan area. The “no contact apprehension” policy, already pilot-tested needs to be expanded and further beefed up through the addition of surveillance cameras in more places. Indeed, traffic rules have to be observed in the same way throughout the area.
• Drop the idea that “the mark of progress and advancement is the number of citizens that can afford cars and private vehicles” and get many more people to actually take public transportation. However, unless the safety, comfort, and convenience of public transport can be significantly upgraded, people will look for more convenient alternatives, and these can clog the over-all transport system. The idea of “P2P” buses that run on schedule and are properly maintained has to be replicated and adapted to other alternative systems of carrying people within metropolitan areas.
• “Carpooling and remote working” can be promoted and facilitated to bring down the number of vehicles on our metropolitan area roads. These should help, and many more alternative possibilities should be explored. But in the end, there is no substitute to a comprehensive urban planning that integrates investment in public infrastructure with real needs for movement of people and of goods within urban districts.

We should not give up looking for workable alternatives to measures that can help ease traffic and keep vehicles moving at a much faster speed within metropolitan areas. But let us be clear: these alternatives should not prevent us from looking at and confronting the bigger, broad-brush issues. Facing them should put us on the road towards significantly minimizing our current traffic mess.