SONA and the MRT

It's funny how th State of the Nation Address or the SONA of PNoy could elicit various opinions, ranging from high praises to didactic downgrading of what he had said.

Actually, PNoy was walking like a technocrat when he delivered his speech, focusing on the infrastructural projects, the incomes from the various agencies, the need to raise this and that, and so much more. He did not talk about the lives of the Filipino people. And that is very sad. He said nothing about how the various sectors have benefitted from his governance. Instead, he had those little episodes about the police who helped a car driver, the recipients of the Conditional Cash Transfer, and the policewoman who caught a holdupper. But he did not say, "I allowed the DOLE to raise the salaries of the workers; to give them free health services;" etc.

One thing that I would like to focus on is the transportation at the MRT. I think PNoy used the anti-people perspective when he said that the real cost of transpo at the MRT is 60 pesos and that the government subsidizes so much as we only pay something like 15 pesos.

I think that is not how an official of the land should speak. Instead, he should have said, I know that the people are having a hard time exercising their freedom of mobility. "So I will make sure that they are able to exercise that to the utmost by making the earnings of the customs pay for their fares."

Is that not the case of a leader-- you look for ways and means to ease the burden of living on the prople. Actually, I was mulling over the earnings of the MRT. For an hour, the MRT is earning a million pesos -- transporting people from SM North EDSA to Taft and back. Multiply that by 8 hours, so that would be 8 hours -- and the MRT operates beyond 8 hours. So in a month that would P240 million pesos. So in ayear it is earning something like P1.9 B.

I think that the problem of maintenance occurs only because there are very few coaches. If the MRT would buy more, then maintenance would not be difficult because there won't be so much need to deal with overloading that destroys the coaches.

Now why can we not manufacture those coaches ourselves. Along the PNR railroad tracks, I see lots of urban poor, creating their makeshift coasters that use the tracks for transporting their passengers from Pandacan to Vito Cruz. Yes, their makeshift "trains" are so reliable that many patronize them. And should there be a real train passing by, all they do is unload all of the passengers and then lift their makeshift vehicle to the side. They return it once the train has passed.

I am sure, we can readily manufacture those trains, maybe even try to make them look like jeepneys.  Instead of buying from Czechoslovakia, we must harness our own resources, the ingenuity of our people and create our own.

Hay naku, that would be the day when we can say, we have arrived.