The Society of Honor by Joe America

By Karl Garcia

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In the Philippines, transport debates play out like moral crusades. Cars are the devil. Public transit is holiness. Bikes promise redemption. But as the Department of Transportation (DoTr) opens bids for a 2055 Transportation System Master Plan—drawing five global consortia competing for $44 million in Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank funding—it’s time to drop the sermons.

Congestion is not a moral failure. It is a systems failure. Cars did not ruin our cities. Ungoverned space did.

Why Cars Persist—and Why They Must

The Philippines is an archipelago with uneven density, fragmented job centers, and a vast informal economy. Daily life is not a neat commute from suburb to CBD. It is a chain: home to sari-sari store to school to work, crossing jurisdictions and modes.

Metro Manila’s average traffic speed hovers at about 19 km/h—worse than Jakarta—not because Filipinos love cars, but because public transport reliably covers only a fraction of these trip chains. Missing last-mile links, unreliable buses, and inconsistent schedules force people to improvise.

For many families, cars are not indulgences. They are coping mechanisms. Demonizing them may feel virtuous, but it solves nothing. Governance does.

The Automotive Path We Squandered

What’s often forgotten in anti-car rhetoric is that the Philippines once had a real automotive story. We invented the jeepney. We built Sarao and Francisco Motors. We assembled the Tamaraw FX and the Vios in Santa Rosa, exporting vehicles across ASEAN. Isuzu still manufactures trucks locally.

Then policy drift set in. No supplier ecosystem. No R&D incentives. No export discipline. No long-term industrial strategy.

While Thailand locked in Japanese manufacturers, South Korea disciplined its chaebols, India enforced local content, and China scaled at speed, the Philippines surrendered. We became an importer in an industry we once helped shape.

Chaos, Not Cars, Grinds Us Down

Congestion is the visible symptom of deeper rot:

• Mixed traffic anarchy: Tricycles, pedicabs, motorcycles, delivery bikes, and private cars compete for the same road space, collapsing average speeds.
• Jurisdictional paralysis: Metro Manila’s 17 LGUs guard turf while national roads choke.
• Enforcement vacuum: No taxi meters, arbitrary loading zones, illegal parking everywhere, freight idling without penalty.
• Land-use blindness: Expressways cut through farmland, worsen flooding, and accelerate sprawl—eroding food security as arable land shrinks year after year.

Blanket car restrictions without systemic fixes backfire. Bangkok’s car curbs boosted motorcycles. Bogotá’s bike lanes faltered when buses failed. Moralizing mobility doesn’t create equity. Organizing it does.

A Unified System That Contains Cars

Successful countries don’t ban cars. They discipline them.

As DoTr evaluates bids from global firms like Systra, TYPSA, and Arup, the real test is not how many roads they can draw, but whether they can design a system that actually works:

• Multimodal spines: Rail, BRT, ferries, and buses integrated with reliable last-mile options—e-bikes, shared shuttles, walkable nodes.
• Data-driven governance: Unified ticketing, real-time passenger information, and AI-guided freight routing that can slash idle time and emissions.
• Land-use discipline: Parking consolidation instead of sprawl, and renewed standards for efficient buses and trucks—not endless flyovers.
• Institutional competence: Training DoTr and DPWH to manage systems and enforce rules, not just pour concrete.

The Climate Math Is Clear

Traffic chaos burns more fuel than orderly movement—even with cars. Idling, detours, and unpredictability are emissions multipliers. The fastest way to cut transport emissions is not moral posturing, but efficiency: smoother flows, shorter trips, and electrified last miles.

With a 2055 horizon, the Philippines cannot afford another generation of infrastructure that looks impressive and functions poorly.

Design Over Default

Cars will remain part of Philippine life. The real question is whether they dominate by neglect or serve by design.

The new transport master plan is an opportunity to build a system where public transport carries the bulk of demand, private vehicles handle the edges efficiently, and chaos finally gives way to order.

But that will only happen if policymakers—and the public—stop treating transport as a culture war and start demanding proof of integration, governance, and results.

The car is not the enemy. Disorder is. And at this stage, refusing to govern transport holistically is no longer inertia. It is sabotage.

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