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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Cars are immortal

Cars are immortal

Published Sep 18, 2023 08:30 pm

MEDIUM RARE

Jullie Y. Daza

There was no rain, ergo no flooding, just as there were no collisions or ongoing roadworks. Yet it took me two hours and 40 minutes to travel 20 km from Mall of Asia to Quezon City on a day that was not a Friday, not a pay day.


At that rate and at a cost of ₱67 per liter of gasoline on a trip that was neither for joyriding nor road-testing, I could’ve traveled to Los Baños, Laguna. Alas, traffic is usually jammed between UP, Ateneo and Miriam, where it is not unusual for the road space to be dominated by the one-student-per-car factor. And yet if those car-borne students had to compete for a ride on public transportation, what would be the effect on the non-student commuters waiting for an hour or so for an already fully packed bus to come along?


Except for the usual blame-heaping on Saudi Arabia and Russia for cutting petroleum supplies and China for resuming full commercial activity, did we hear any voices from the Department of Energy or any likely/unlikely authority/expert/spokesperson speaking up to assuage our anxieties? It’s been 11 weeks of unstoppable fuel price increases, and at the rate Christmas is breathing down our necks... Meanwhile, traders foresee the US dollar picking up and the peso losing ground as the weather turns toward winter in the northern hemisphere.


EDSA alone is not to blame. According to figures cited by the automobile industry, a total of 276,215 vehicles were sold from January to August 2023, a 22 percent increase from last year’s figures – prosperity is on the rise! And yet how many of those vehicles ended up in Metro Manila, are forced to travel on EDSA either way at all hours to join the fun of being stuck with the rest of us in our compacts, SUV’s, trucks and busses? If only we could find a way to avoid traffic by avoiding EDSA!


On the other hand, and it’s an uncontested fact, and likewise in my humble opinion, that privately owned cars in the Philippines are immortal. They live on and on, passing from one owner or generation to the next, but have you actually seen any of them ending up in a scrap heap? 

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