I was watching the news on TV after having dinner at home and caught one segment where the report featured an assessment of traffic schemes along Commonwealth Avenue. Prominently shown was an interview of the DPWH secretary where he is quoted relating the assessment of Australian and Korean experts about their assessment of safety along Commonwealth Avenue. What struck me about the assessment by foreign experts was that they were practically the same things pointed out by local experts from the NCTS and TSSP back in the day when Bayani Fernando was Chair of the MMDA. At the time, that agency was embarking on what the Chairman called the “Grand Rotunda Scheme” more popularly known as the U-turn Scheme that was to replace most of Metro Manila’s traffic signals with U-turn slots that were supposed to function much the same as roundabouts. This obsession with the U-turn as the ultimate solution to Metro Manila traffic culminated with the construction of the twin U-turn flyovers along C5-Kalayaan that was the subject of a protracted argument between the MMDA and the DPWH. From what I gathered in the news report, the DPWH and MMDA are currently discussing how to come up with an effective scheme for Commonwealth, showing that the two agencies are now quite receptive to alternatives and are keeping their options open, a flexibility that was absent in the past decade.

The Australian and Korean experts mentioned in the report are consultants for the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) that is to be implemented through the DPWH and is supported by the road safety program of the World Bank. I have mixed feelings about the reception of their assessment particularly because I have seen the same thing happen where the so-called neutral or objective assessment of foreign experts seem to weigh more than those of local experts.

Don’t get me wrong about this feeling as I am also truly happy that their assessment is the same as those made by local experts early last decade and repeated to whomever had the time to listen or pay attention to their assessments. In fact, I am on the Steering Committee of this iRAP project and would be eager to see how the souped-up van that will run through more than 3,000 kilometers of Philippine roads will assess these infrastructure according to the star rating system iRAP has developed and calibrated to become an international standard for road safety assessment. Perhaps the outcomes of this project will allow us to compare with other countries’ roads including those in Malaysia, which the DPWH secretary mentioned earlier this year would be the benchmark for the Philippines. I am hopeful that the outcomes of iRAP Philippines will allow the DPWH and other agencies concerned including the tollway operators to improve the safety features of our highways. After all, the bottomline is not really who made the assessments or the recommendations but whether these would be implemented at all, and if we are able to save lives in the end.