With the growing mobility crisis (yes, I called it that), it is easy for anyone to get frustrated of the status quo and point fingers on who to blame. When you spend a total of 6 hours of your life to travel a then 1-hour commute, anyone in your way can be blamed for anything, what more this traffic deluge. The private sector blames mass transport, mass transport operators blame private cars, everyone blames the government and the government blames the previous administration, leaving us with the proverbial Gordian Knot.

Well, one of the silent sufferers of this debacle is commercial transport. This sector includes vehicles used to transport goods and materials from one point to another. I say silent because you never hear them form a rally, lobby in congress or senate, make representations in the media but their plight is one that can bring down economies. Why you may ask. This is because they are the lifeblood of any economy, they bring in raw materials from suppliers, foreign and local (farmers, etc.) and bring out finished goods ranging from building materials to your beloved milk tea.

And yet, this country, rather than improve the flow of goods to invigorate the economy, is hellbent on regulating commercial transport. You have cities, municipalities and even barangays collecting toll fees, requiring stickers and permits, imposing truck bans (which are not insync by the way) and generally making it difficult for LEGITIMATE trade to ply the streets. This is on top of national and local agencies apprehending them for imagined slights. In this country, commercial transport is the devil, well aside from the usual news headliners.

All of these combined with the hellish traffic condition present everywhere even in my hometown, grinds our economy down to its level decades back. This makes prices to go up even with a falling inflation rates because moving goods has become uneconomical for everyone. No matter how low gas prices and COGS goes, prices will stay in their level at best because of this.

In conclusion, we are victims of our own explosive growth, nobody from this time back to the recent past anticipated this for their own reasons. We are all victims as commuters, as driving enthusiasts, as consumers and as transport practitioners. Just like the famous gearhead quote telling us that there is no replacement for displacement, there is no solution but thought evolution (it needs to rhyme) and also infrastructure.