[Kasalikasan] What do site visitors and rubbish have in frequent? Band-aid options

From experimenting with bus lanes to imposing steep rubbish charges, we preserve selecting band-aid options over fixing the system

Hiya!

January all the time feels just like the longest month of the 12 months as a result of it’s the primary month again from the vacations. However you realize what feels longer? Being caught in site visitors, losing minutes, generally hours, when you could possibly be doing extra productive issues along with your time.

In the event you stay or work in Metro Manila, the place have been you final December 9? I used to be lucky sufficient to have the choice to earn a living from home that day, however many staff didn’t have that luxurious: Based on the most recent TomTom Visitors Index, that was the worst day to journey in Metro Manila in 2025, with the congestion degree reaching a whopping 88% — and that wasn’t even peak Christmas season but!

The identical index additionally identified {that a} 10-kilometer drive within the metro in 2025 took 31 seconds longer than the 2024 common. 

What does that say in regards to the efforts to resolve Metro Manila’s perennial site visitors downside when it’s taking longer, not shorter, for us to go from level A to level B?

Alongside EDSA alone, too many “options” have been touted within the final 12 months, they usually have been typically makes an attempt to take away the bus carousel lane that has served hundreds of thousands as an alternative of coping with the congestion brought on by increasingly vehicles plying by roads that aren’t appropriate for heavy site visitors. 

The newest suggestion? Make the bus lane a carpool lane, too, however for automobiles with 10 or extra individuals. My fellow editors and I questioned how that will even work: Would individuals begin shopping for vans now? And received’t this solely delay not simply buses but additionally ambulances that use the lane throughout emergencies? So many questions on one other band-aid resolution (which the transportation division has rightfully shut down). Possibly let’s go away the bus lane alone and channel our vitality into bettering our public transportation and decongesting our roads, sure?

What else occurred in January? Early final month, Manila Metropolis got here out with a press release defending its controversial ordinance on rubbish assortment charges as “lawful and constitutionally sound,” in all probability after companies groaned from the astronomical enhance in charges that had not been up to date since 2013. Rappler reporter Patrick Cruz wrote that some companies decried the dearth of public session, however the metropolis’s vice mayor mentioned the hike didn’t require one — by no means thoughts if the rise is as a lot as 1,200%.

Wouldn’t it actually damage to seek the advice of companies that present employment and produce income to the capital metropolis? And with the nation’s stable waste administration nonetheless “removed from very best,” perhaps it’s time to take an extended, arduous have a look at this concentrate on assortment with out addressing the opposite elements in managing waste. If solely we might implement our stable waste administration legal guidelines higher, perhaps we wouldn’t must amend them to discover extra band-aid options.

We deserve higher.

Until the Tuesday after subsequent!

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