People Reduction Program by Ronan S. Estoque, DPA (January, 2008)

It is very noticeable that during the semestral and summer break, traffic in the metropolis is light. Students that seem to crowd the streets and malls are surprisingly absent - when there is an academic furlough this leads to a city traffic that is inevitably light and easier.

Whenever there is traffic or gridlock – time, manpower and opportunities are lost that are certain never to present themselves again. Like a cancer that is brought about by urbanization, traffic seems to be an inherent problem that is beyond a simplistic solution.

The government, in response the horrendous daily traffic brings, adopted numerous schemes so as to lessen, avoid and if possible, eradicate the curse of traffic. From the multi-billion projects of MRT to LRT, to the construction of “infrastructures” that was designed originally to decongest potential traffic gridlocks.

The government even went to the extent of establishing a government arm specifically tasked with controlling metro traffic. The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), with its annual expenditures of another billion of pesos acts as a main traffic enforcer for the Metropolis.

From a color-coding scheme to an odd-even program to a unified vehicular reduction program, the social experimentation was meant to gather empirical data so as to ease metro traffic and have a semblance of reason in the management of number of vehicles using the road of the metropolis.

The weakness of an odd-even scheme is that even if there is a vehicular reduction, people (particularly students) would still need to commute from their place of residence to their schools. Yes, there is a reduction of vehicles on the road, but there are still students on the road using another mode of transportation and still causes another form of traffic and gridlock.

Crudely, what I have in mind is that instead of focusing on reducing vehicles on the road of metropolis, maybe a more efficient mode of reducing students on the road would be more effective in reducing traffic and gridlock.

Now how do we go about this?

We reduce the number of students on the road by having a school time that does not coincide with the usual time frame of the other sector of society. When employees are usually within the time frame of 8 AM to 5 PM/9 AM to 6 PM, maybe students could be on a 6 AM to 2 PM time frame where there are a lesser number of people on the road since majority of them are still at work.

This suggested arrangement reduces the number of people on the road where instead of adopting a vehicular reduction program, the government adopts a people reduction program. Lesser people on the road means lesser traffic…

This particular set-up is applicable only in Metro Manila since this is where traffic is very heavy. In the province, the status quo of schedule is sufficient to meet the current dictates and imperatives.