Solving Manila’s Traffic Woes
I moved to Manila in July 2013 and I love it but I also noticed, due to my incredibly keen powers of observation, that we have a slight traffic problem. Many cities in the world share this but Manila is one of the worst I have ever encountered.
I am a little slow on the uptake but I did begin noticing the problem when I took one of my first jeepney rides. I spent approximately 12 minutes going from Jupiter to Buendia Street which happens to be a short block of one traffic light. Walking with crutches should take you about 2 minutes to cross, even giving you time to pickup a drink along the way.
It slowly began to dawn on me that I have a favorable solution to the traffic woes of Manila! We live in a cosmopolitan modern up and coming city. Many of you have never been to London, England and many of you have never visited Pisa, Italy. So why not let these two great cities meet and come together right here in Manila?
I am sure you are asking yourself at this point in the article…………what exactly is this guy’s point and how is he, a foreigner going to ease our traffic congestion when we have been struggling with this problem for so many years.
The Solution
Firstly, picture the famous London double decker bus and picture the famous Italian leaning tower of Pisa and VOILA! I give you the latest in Manila transit, the DOUBLE DECKER LEANING JEEPNEY TOWER.
Knowing you fine people of Manila, you understandably would want to surpass the British as well as the Italians so why not also bring in the TRIPLE and QUADRUPLE LEANING JEEPNEY TOWERS for good measure?
By stacking the rides, we can double, triple and quadruple the seats on each new Jeepney, thereby freeing up valuable road space to accommodate the multitude of taxi’s, scooters, motorcycles, bicycles, tricycles and people.
As you can see from the picture, getting in is simple and effective, just climb the 2-3 rope ladders on the back, find a comfortable seat, sit back and enjoy the fumes! Getting out is even simpler, just slide down the pole in the center of the stack from the 2nd, 3rd or 4th level.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself but should this Jeepney project work well we can start to think about adding 2, 3 and 4 levels to the MRT and LRT system as well. The one significant change I would make on the train system would be to remove the sliding doors as well as the windows so as to fit a few extra bodies during the busy rush hour times.
I really do believe that the good citizens of Manila deserve the very best when it comes to comfortable safe commuting on their city streets, don’t you?
