Why the Skyway is not always faster

MOTORISTS heading for Manila from points south last Saturday afternoon discovered to their horror that the Skyway is not always faster.

What normally takes about 12 minutes to drive through took all of 55 minutes because for some reason best known to themselves, personnel of Citra Metro Manila Tollways Corp., operator of the South and North Luzon Expressways and Manila Skyway, closed all the tollgate exit lanes except one. Even the dedicated E-Pass exit lane was closed.

The chaos on the Skyway last Saturday reflected gross inefficiency on the part of Citra and its dismal inability to solve the traffic jams at the toll plazas. To phrase it positively, Citra last Saturday displayed its ability to create traffic jams at the toll plazas. The lines of cars queuing at the tollgates of the Skyway as well as the South Luzon Expressway (Slex) are getting longer instead of shorter mainly because Citra has adopted the policy of closing off one lane for the exclusive use of E-Pass subscribers.

Motorists and commuters who use the Slex regularly have noticed lately that the northbound exit ramp to C-5 is now almost always jammed bumper to bumper with traffic because one of the two lanes has been converted to a dedicated E-Pass lane. Prior to this, traffic flowed more freely on the C-5 ramp.

The same thing happened at the southbound Sucat exit. Ever since the leftmost lane became a dedicated E-Pass lane, traffic slowed down to a crawl even though the Sucat exit ramp has more than two lanes. As for the Filinvest Alabang exit, it is now famous for breaking the record for the length of time it takes to reach the toll booth, thanks to Citra’s closure of one of the two exit lanes in favor of E-Pass subscribers.

In an e-mail to this columnist after I wrote about the E-Pass ("Why the E-Pass is a failure," Nov. 30, 2000), Citra marketing manager Olive F. Martinez claimed that ``since we opened those dedicated lanes at Filinvest, our numbers for E-Pass traffic increased by 88 percent."

Perhaps someone should point out to Ms Martinez that the company she works for did not really open dedicated lanes at Filinvest. What Citra really did was close several existing lanes to the general motoring public so that only E-Pass subscribers could use them. If Citra had the common sense to build additional lanes as dedicated E-Pass lanes instead of grabbing existing lanes from the toll-paying public, traffic flow would have been enhanced instead of being delayed even more. And less people would have been antagonized.

As for the 88 percent increase in E-Pass traffic alleged by Citra--hello?! To see is to believe. While lining up to pay at any toll plaza, a motorist can usually count on the fingers of one hand the number of cars zipping through the dedicated E-Pass lane. In fact, the E-Pass lane is almost always so empty that the traditional Chinese New Year’s dragon dance can be performed there without obstructing traffic.

Citra is depriving the motoring public of exit lanes and thereby aggravates the traffic problem in a desperate effort to coerce motorists to subscribe to its overpriced E-Pass. As Citra’s Ms Martinez stated in her e-mail, ``Regarding the dedicated lanes, we took into consideration the risks. . . But I hope you also realize that without the dedicated E-Pass lanes, the migration of cash users to E-Pass will be very slow."

Dedicated E-Pass lanes are fine, as long as you don’t take exit lanes away from the majority in order to give them to the few who have the E-Pass. Citra is marketing the E-Pass the wrong way by making life harder for motorists who can’t afford or simply don’t want to subscribe to the E-Pass at this time. The more you bully or hard-sell a prospective customer, the more you will turn him off. Citra’s managers may be laboring under the delusion that their arbitrary dedicated lane scheme is succeeding. But it is only succeeding in alienating the toll-paying motorists and stiffening sales resistance to the E-Pass while at the same time increasing traffic congestion, wasteful fuel consumption and air pollution.