I Had No Idea Rush Hour Commuting Is This Bad Nowadays [Traffic]

Not from today, but I needed something to go along with the article.

This is actually preferable to this evening's traffic.

The last time I commuted on EDSA on a regular working day and during rush hour was probably 3 or so years ago. I was working over at Buendia that time, so I'm familiar with the route I took today, which also saw me commuting along Buendia. Below is a rough timeline of my commute, along with commentary.

6:00 PM - Out the office.

6:05 PM - Because there seemingly was a dearth of jeeps going to EDSA (looks like they're all stuck in traffic in the other direction, towards Taft Avenue), I opted to walk from Malugay to EDSA. No big, I did the same earlier this morning - lots of people taking the EDSA-Buendia to Washington jeep.

6:19 PM - Reached EDSA. Yes, I walk slower than you, so sue me. Already people were spilling out on the side of EDSA, around a hundred stretched out from the intersection to the other end of the Shell station there. MRT lines were even longer. Traffic was, obviously, pretty bad. I opted to walk along EDSA towards Estrella (i.e. north-bound) for a couple of reasons:

1.) The only way I could ride the bus is if I sardine'd myself on it. Buses were already full (as in, standing room-only, box office megablockbuster hit) and most of them weren't even opening their doors at all at this point, so you know they're super full, 99% chance over listed capacity. Buses here won't close their doors unless they're super over capacity.

2.) I have this habit of opting to walk to another spot further down the road, hoping to catch less-full buses before they load up with other commuters in stops before mine. In the hundred or so estimate I gave earlier, this doesn't include the dozens more people who were also doing the same thing I chose to do.

3.) I need to satisfy my morbid curiosity on how deep this rabbit hole goes, so to speak. My baseline standard for this experiment is to determine where I could catch an Alabang-bound bus where there's one seat available.

So off I walked.

6:30-ish PM - EDSA absolutely hates pedestrians. The sidewalks went from two-people wide, to single-person wide. Yup, one lane that people going in either direction should share with people going in the opposite direction to theirs (this entails some light contortions in turning to the side to pass, or simply going on the road itself). One of my personal seemingly-minor, but important, determining factors on how progressive a city is is how walkable that city is. Metro Manila fails in this regard. No surprise really, because this is a city that pretty much encourages private car usage instead fixing mass transport. Everyone who has a say in running the metropolis all use private vehicles for day-to-day commute, so they look after their own. Main thoroughfares like EDSA are dominated by private cars (taxis also fall into this category when it comes to usage) during rush hour and the push by some to even further diminish bus presence on main thoroughfares is very puzzling (not that the gonzo other extreme of having only buses on EDSA during rush hour period is ideal - it's not). Complain about buses all you want, but they're hauling 70+ passengers per during rush hour, on a space of road that's about equivalent to two of those private cars (total actual passengers on average - 5 thereabouts). Why no sweeping changes are being pushed for improving/reorganizing bus routes here is curious. There are plenty of roads in the metro, but only a small percentage of them are actually used by buses. This has to change.

My personal suggestion: classify roads into three major groups. Subdivision roads, secondary roads, main roads. Trikes should only service subdivisions, jeeps for secondary roads, then only buses should be the sole PUVs on main roads. Better yet, retire the jeepney (save for tourist-y purposes), reorganize bus routes to better use the metro's roads, both main and secondary roads. Then do away with the "boundary" system and mandate PUV owners to pay regular salaries to drivers.

Of course, actually penalizing errant drivers (this goes for both private and PUV drivers) should already be automatic wherever fixing Metro Manila's roads are concerned.

6-something PM - I didn't check the time, but I can tell you that when I reached Estrella, buses were still full.

6-something PM - Reached Guadalupe. Any luck? Nope.

6-something PM - Crossed the Pasig River and now at Boni. At this point, there were a few buses which had relatively decent (and I'm very generous with this description) standing room, so if that's your thing, congrats! As for me, I've already come this far from Buendia, might as well see it to the end.

The route via Google Maps. Added just to break the wall of text. You're welcome. :)

7:00 PM - I'm now at Shaw. And I found a non-aircon bus which had four seats available. Success! I'm not one to complain about non-aircon buses. I'm used to them, but of course, YMMV (your mileage may vary). As an addendum, I actually rode another non-aircon bus going to Makati this morning, because commuting in the morning from Alabang is apparently also hell nowadays. Scarcity of buses + huge volume of people makes for long queues, which, sometimes, aren't even followed. Huzzah.

Because traffic was bad, I figured I'd doze off and hopefully wake up when the bus was already on SLEX.

8:00 PM - Woke up to happily find that the bus was still at Estrella. Woohoo!

8:10 PM - So the traffic picked up a bit, and now I'm at Buendia. If you're keeping score at home, my walk from Buendia to Shaw was 30 minutes shorter than the bus ride going the other way for the same distance. Yeah, traffic was that bad.

8:17 PM - Thankfully, the bus opted to use the underpass on EDSA-Ayala, and picked up speed. Apparently, the traffic was along Ayala Avenue, because I noticed there's a long queue for cars going right from EDSA. Again, most of the volume was private cars, but just nod and agree when they tell you the buses are to blame for that traffic as well.  They won't listen otherwise. Exacerbating traffic issues are bad road habits and sheer selfishness on the road, and blame goes both ways, on public and private drivers alike. This is worsened by the MMDA's mostly lax enforcement of traffic rules. You can actually be a d-bag on the road here and get away with it. Just look at motorcycle drivers - they're above the law.

8:30 PM - Reached Alabang market. Thankfully, no traffic on SLEX.

So that's my hell commute today. It wasn't this bad 3 years ago. A 2-and-a-half hour commute used to happen only on Fridays preceding a payday weekend. Why it happened on a Tuesday evening, I have no idea, but it could be one of those weird traffic situations that tend to pop up every so often in a woefully mismanaged Metro Manila. I need a bigger sample size to definitively determine if this is becoming a trend, but shit if it is. Spending 2.5 hours on what is effectively a 19-km route is a huge waste of time that can be used to rest up or do something to have a better work-life balance.

It's the sort of thing that pushes people to just drive their own cars and motorcycles, too. And worsen the traffic situation. The white elephant in the room when discussing things like minimizing buses on the road and clearing up more road space for the 20% private car 'commuters' is that if we're already having problems with traffic now, imagine if half of the 80% that commutes decided to just drive their own cars, too.

It will be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.