Infrastructure promise awaited

By Maria Eloisa I. Calderon
Editor-at-Large

FIVE DAYS a week, from her home in suburb Bacoor City to her Quezon City office and back, Junelyn C. Remoto takes the pedicab, hops on a provincial bus, braves the crowded Metro Rail Transit line and squeezes into a packed jeepney.

In her mid-30s — young enough to survive the long walks, an hour of waiting in queues, and all the bumping and knee-brushing — Ms. Remoto says she doesn’t know how long she can last that daily ordeal.

“My eyes well up with tears while on a bus ride everyday,” the senior treasurer for a media company said in an interview.

“I had thought of resigning but when I think of the bills to pay, I’d tell myself: Fight!”

Current transport woes are not unique to Metro Manila — from Bangkok to Jakarta to India, governments had been announcing mammoth infrastructure spending plans aimed at solving their cities’ worsening traffic.

But whether those projects are meshed neatly together in a grand master plan of highways, subways, bus rapid transit systems and elevated railways is unclear to a commuter like Ms. Remoto.

On Wednesday, two days before President Rodrigo R. Duterte marks his first year in office, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) announced that the government has adopted a “National Transport Policy” (NTP) that “aims to unify all transport-related projects in the country.”

It’s all up in the air, with the policy’s implementing rules “yet to be formulated” and given the lack of clarity on whether the transport projects under the Duterte government’s broader “Build Build Build” infrastructure plan will fall under it. That plan budgets public spending at P8-9 trillion from 2017 to 2022, so that it accounts for 7.4% of the economy by then from just 4.7% last year.
What’s clear is that the NTP “envisions a national transport system that is safe, secure, reliable, efficient, integrated, intermodal, affordable, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable, and people-oriented,” NEDA’s June 28 press release read.

MASTER PLANS
Though clearly late in the game, that national transport policy may be the panacea needed to unify Metro Manila’s fragmented mass transit system, just like master plans were the very backbone that allows a traveler to get to Yokohama from Tokyo in a seamless train ride in just an hour; that guarantees commuting in Singapore, by 2030, complete in 60 minutes if the distance is less than 20 kilometers; and that introduces Bus Rapid Transit corridors in London to add to its already efficient transit system also by 2030.
Those cities — considered among the most livable in the world — stick by decades-old but evolving master plans. Tokyo’s urban rail master plan is over 100 years old, but Japan’s capital has introduced an updated version in 2000 and then for urban development last year to take into account earthquakes and the 2020 Olympics, while Singapore’s landmark 1996 transport master plan shaped the city-state’s transport landscape for almost two decades until it revised it in 2013 after its steel trains broke down for the first time in December 2011.

Centralized planning and continuity had been missing here, an urban planner said.

“Projects planned in the 70s, early 80s but not implemented are partly being implemented now,” Felipe A. Palafox, Jr. said in a statement to ����ý sent through his executive assistant.

“We lost so much opportunity developing our country,” the now 67-year old urban planner said, noting how a transport land-use and development planning project that he helped craft for Metro Manila in the ‘70s was put on the backburner.

The “Build Build Build” plan does have shades of continuity, with about two-thirds of the 61 projects being inherited from the Aquino and Arroyo governments as President Rodrigo R. Duterte honored contracts awarded during his predecessor’s time so that they didn’t have to start from the drawing board.

About a quarter, or 14 of the 61 listed under the infrastructure plan, are transport projects specifically focused on Metro Manila — from roads and bus rapid transit systems that link the upscale commercial and residential Bonifacio Global City to the Ortigas business district and to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport; to a bus rapid transit system within the city that shuttles commuters to railway interchanges; to transport hubs and extensions of the elevated railway systems which are projects inherited from the previous administration; and more expressways that will connect suburbs in the north to the south, effectively decongesting the city’s busiest road, EDSA.

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“We can all agree the Philippines needs infrastructure of just about every kind: better roads, airports, seaports, mass transit, etc. The most important thing is that projects are being approved now,” said Sylvester Wong, Philippines Business Lead at global infrastructure firm AECOM, the urban planner behind the London 2030 Transportation Master Plan.

“We need every infra project… we just need them to be more than the sum of their parts. AECOM is ready to assist the Philippines… on individual projects, or to help weave the current mosaic of individual projects into a more cohesive tapestry,” Mr. Wong said in a June 29 e-mail when asked whether the projects are glued neatly together to form a grand master plan for a livable, sustainable city.

LOOSER PURSE STRINGS
One year after Mr. Duterte took office, investors appeared to be forgiving about how fast infrastructure projects are delivered, banking on his promise that his government will spend anyway.

“One year since coming to power, President Duterte… has not been the disaster for the economy that some feared… he has delegated economic management to his respected finance minister, Carlos (G.) Dominguez III,” London-based Capital Economics wrote in a June 23 note that reviewed the president’s accomplishments on his first year.

“Dominguez’s other main achievement has been to stick with the previous government’s plans of raising infrastructure spending.”
The delay has to do with the nitty-gritty in how to finance them, an economic manager said.

Majority of the infrastructure projects are to be bankrolled either by the national budget or official development assistance (ODA), according to the tally provided by the Build Build Build portal. That’s the plan as the Duterte government slowly weans away from the public-private partnership (PPP) model championed by Mr. Aquino, but the tricky part is that it has also launched an abrasive rhetoric against its longtime foreign aid donors, the European Union and the United States.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia said the funding mix isn’t final.

“It will be an optimal mix of GAA (General Appropriations Act), ODA and PPP,” Mr. Pernia said in a June 28 phone interview.
The NEDA, Finance and Budget departments are “trying to determine which of the three modes of funding will be fastest and most cost-effective,” he said.

To a government wanting to spend more but still persistently remains in the red, building an efficient mass transit system similar to that of Tokyo, Singapore or London would be a luxury.

To a commuter in an economy growing at a pace almost matching China’s, that efficient mass transit system should be a banal amenity.
“The MRT train to Cavite (part of the Build Build Build plan) will be a relief,” Ms. Remoto said.