Philippine Roads

I went back to Manila last week for a vacation. I must say, nothing much has changed in the Philippines or Manila for that matter. It was raining the whole week and we had a typhoon. As usual, when classes were finally suspended, the rain stopped.

Of course, since it was raining hard, most streets were flooded. Unbelievable that this problem has never been solved in more than 20 years.

Another thing I noticed which usually happens, whenever there is heavy rain or flooding, roads degrade and potholes pops up everywhere. Why does the DPWH keeps using substandard asphalt? You can see it from the way it was made even without rain that it's substandard. In other countries, asphalts are tightly packed that you they look like smooth concrete. But in the Philippines, asphalt looks like smoothed gravel. So when it rains, they loosen up and breaks apart creating potholes.

Once potholes happen, every vehicle slows down creating traffic. No matter how fast the MMDA works to patch things up, they just break apart a few weeks later. What a waste of money.

And please don't tell me that the unique weather of the Philippines makes it hard to build asphalt that last. There's more rain in Vancouver and London than in the Philippines plus the heat and cold of the summer and winter. But their asphalt doesn't break apart.

And concrete is not the solution either. Nobody uses concrete to build roads in Canada or the US anymore. Asphalt is cheaper, can withstand heavy loads, faster to lay down, recyclable and last longer if applied properly. It is easier to patch up too. But I have never seen asphalt laid down properly in the cities of Metro Manila.

If you don't believe me, look at the SCTEX, that's asphalt. It's smooth to drive. Now imagine that applied to EDSA, wouldn't it be a better drive?

But no, somebody has to make money off it, so whatever money was taken by someone, that money is reduced in the quality of the materials. So everybody ends up with substandard roads.

Don't believe me? I know someone who used to work for the DPWH before he migrated. He said that what they used to do is build a portion of the highway to standard but the rest are substandard. When someone does testing, they let them test the one up to standard. Since nobody tests the whole highway, the tester passes the road as up to standard. But you can see that it breaks down after a few months or just after a year. When it breaks down, that means there's more money to be made for repairs.

You can even see how bad roads are made. Just look at the P1 Billion Macapagal Boulevard. It's not even finished properly. In short, the workmanship is awful. Look at the curb, it's like patchwork.

Hindi pulido ang trabaho. P1 Billion na ginastos ganon pa ang trabaho? Hanlabo man!