Today's Exactly100: The Only Way to Decongest Metro Manila Traffic... is to Decongest Metro Manila

Gerard Carreon/Rappler

The only way.

Start by looking at the Philippine map and realizing there are 7,106 other islands. In the 70s, an executive order drew a demarcation line around NCR, barring manufacturing companies from crossing it. Political winds have since rendered that line ineffective. Today, in areas as quintessentially Metro Manila as Bicutan, factories share walls with residential homes.

Duterte flirted with decentralization but lost interest. The plan was to disperse parts of the government into "balance country" and make Clark a viable alternate city.

If politics and big business didn’t interfere, we'd have commonsense solutions to many of our problems. /Vincent R. Pozon