traffic...

There are 3 activities that take up the large majority of my time here in the Philippines: (1) sleeping (2) working and (3) sitting in traffic.  I thought I’d take a break from talking about health-related matters this week and blog about the far most unpleasant activity out of these 3.

Manila is NOTORIOUS for having some of the worst traffic in the world (ranked #3 worst city in the world according to CNNGo).  I’ve sat in some traffic jams here that make morning rush hour on the George Washington Bridge look like a trip down the street.  And if you’re one of the many unlucky ones who cannot find a cab in the rain, you better hope that you have a spare change of clothes and some extra cash for a potential stay at a hotel for the night (keep in mind it’s rainy season here).  In fact, when sitting in traffic for so long, it’s actually refreshing to have a cab driver that drives on the wrong side of the road at times to keep moving forward.  In case I haven’t painted a clear enough picture yet… traffic here is pretty bad…

I had a conversation with a one of the Filipina secretaries at work about her morning commute recently.  She told me that she has to take 5 jeepneys (jeepney: souped up jeep that serves as the primary method of public transportation in Manila) over the course of 1.5-2 hours to get to work on average (even 3 hours in the rain).  This doesn’t seem all that bad until I remembered that she’s been doing this same commute for over 30 years!  When I heard this, I was reminded of a recent article I read by Ricardo Hausmann.  In the article, he writes:

“In the typical developing-country city…Daily commute times for low-income formal-sector workers often exceed three hours, and the average direct cost of transportation is equivalent to roughly two hours of work at the minimum wage. An eight-hour shift becomes an 11-hour shift for which net pay is only six hours.  This implies an effective tax rate of 45% on low-income formal-sector workers.”

If you are interested, you can find the rest of the article at this website: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-logic-of-the-informal-economy-by-ricardo-hausmann.  I’ll let Hausmann talk about the implications for better urban planning and policy.  As for me, I’m just hoping to find some readers who can commiserate with my traffic woes.  Until next time!