What is your problem, Cebu?

Cebu is now drowning from traffic congestion and garbage that even if collected are not sent to what can be acceptably called a sanitary landfill.

Many related problems exist too, like the noise and air and water pollution as Cebu becomes overcrowded with people and cars and other things that come with the rapid urbanization of Metro Cebu.

Problems like these when not foreseen or resolved earlier will become more costly to solve later.

However, instead of sitting down together to see the best way of resolving our problems now, our leaders are at loggerheads as to how we solve them.

To resolve the traffic gridlock, for example, one group favor the least costly method first, one that they feel is not disruptive to our day-to-day activities.

The other has other ideas, no matter what.

What now with the heated exchange of words? Who would prevail? Who knows but the one who holds the purse string has the final say. We need not end this way.

The better way is for all of us to take a backseat this Lenten season to see what is in front and ahead of us.

We know that Cebu is beset with many problems but what really is the real problem now facing us and in the future?

To me, the real problem is the one which when resolved will allow many other related or contingent and consequent problems to be resolved as well.

After all, no one problem, no matter how big or small, could arise mainly on its own.

It must be caused by or related to something else. The problem is that the cause or related to many other problems must be the one to be examined first to determine what can be done to it.

To explain my point, let us just focus first on the most urgent of our problems now. The traffic gridlock in the city. What causes it?

Obviously, the answer is too many cars on the road that exceeds the existing capacity of our road network to absorb and allow cars to move freely with very little loss of time to reach their destinations. What is the solution? In practice, we demand to widen the existing roads or build new ones.

That we can’t do anymore because the right of way is too expensive now to acquire. Beside that is our bad habit of wanting to see our road widened but only if not in our front yard. We then had flyovers and more were planned not long ago.

No more, one group would say later because they are ugly and that they really do not prevent the bottlenecks at all when it is needed most at rush hours.

Now comes the fly-under and the tunnel as proposed by one group. Will they be effective with the same road width? Who knows? Will they push through? Again, no way, the other group would say. Their construction is very disruptive to our day-to-day activities.

There is no traffic alternate rerouting plan. Why not just put up flares or more traffic lights and traffic men at the intersections, and study the problem more, they would say.

Fact is that no country has ever solved its traffic congestion problem by looking at the supply side alone; that is the widening or building of more roads, construction of flyovers, tunnels, etc. We’ve got to look at the demand side too.

For nothing that is scarce is exempt from the law of supply and demand.

If supply of road space exceeds demand, the users are happy.

When demand exceeds supply, there comes frustration as we struggle to compete with each other to get to where we want.

Now it also goes that when we cannot increase the supply of our road space, we have only one other way to resolve our traffic problem. Control its demand.

But it seems that nobody here is looking at this side of the equation.

In some countries, they discourage or limit car ownership. In others, they make them pay high for using the most used road.

Look at this.

Because of our rapid population growth alone, we will also need more road space to meet our growing travel needs.

How much more when we add economic growth which increases our income and sales of cars faster than our need for other things.

When faced with fixed supply of road space, we should not be surprised then if every year the traffic gridlock gets worse and worse in the city.

My point here is that given our limited ability and willingness to increase our supply of road space by widening or other means, unless we do something also with the demand side for the use of our limited road space, it will not be long when we will also spend more time on the road than at work that comes with very high opportunity costs in terms of foregone income from lose of time and suffering from great stress while on the road.

Frankly, the way we respond to our problems now is inadequate.

We plan piecemeal, not comprehensively.

We do not prioritize and we lack the money to spend for all the projects that we want.

We have to plan comprehensively because all our problems stem not from one cause alone but from many interlocking problems which starts with our rapid population growth and expanding economic activities and social activities as human beings.

Economic because we need to survive and accumulate wealth to ensure the welfare of our loved ones.

Social because we do not live by bread alone.

We also want all the other good things in life.

We have to prioritize our needs because we do not have all the resources to meet them.

Lacking the comprehensive plan and prioritization, we do things haphazardly. Lacking the resources, we quarrel what gets funded first.

Meanwhile, our greed also means that we are not satisfied with less. If we can afford to buy two or more cars, why have only one.