Traffic snarls have easy solutions

First of all, Panama isn’t the only city in the Americas with hour-long commutes into the city from outlying regions less than 30 kilometers away. In Toronto, the newspapers are full of motorists bemoaning the fact that they have to drive an hour to get into town. The difference between the two cities, though, is that Toronto is extending its subway system to connect with more railway stations and to create a new extension to the airport. Toronto taxi drivers will miss their $60 airport fares.

START DIGGING. We are in urgent need of a mass-transit subway system like that in the Dominican Republic and Canada that incorporate buses, taxis, and private vehicles. Even, if it means a tax increase of 50 cents on each gallon of gas, Panamanian drivers would pay the fuel tax to be free of hour-long traffic jams.

During the last presidential election, President-elect Ricardo Martinelli proposed the building of a Panama City metro similar to one in use for the past six months in Santo Domingo. That metro system was built to reduce heavy traffic congestion, to circumvent a disorganized and inefficient public transportation system, and to cut air pollution.

It complements other forms of public transportation with 100 feeder buses and taxis. The first line has 16 stations; 6 elevated, 10 underground and a total route length of 14.5 km (9.6 miles). Daily ridership is estimated to be a maximum of about 200,000 passengers for the first line.

The island’s metro is run as an independent institution; not a government agency. Up to this point, the cost per km constructed is remarkably low when compared to similar existing international projects. Nevertheless, costs are enormous for undertakings of this kind and they tend to balloon. For example, the budget allocated for the Santo Domingo Metro was higher than the combined budgets of three important ministries and five other governmental institutions. Expect the PRD and other opposition groups to scream with outrage as the government tables ever-expanding budgets for the completion of the metro project.

CHINESE/ GREEK WAY. These two countries immediately reduced car congestion in Athens and Beijing by fifty percent after declaring that vehicles with plates ending in odd numbers could travel in the city only on odd-numbered days. This edict encouraged car-pooling and used tolls to effectively regulate taxi, bus, and truck traffic coming into the cities. We could put the tolls and odd/ even plate number enforcers on our two access bridges into Panama City. This would be ideal as an interim measure to keep traffic down during the construction of the city’s metro line.

RIO HATO AIRPORT. Open the Rio Hato airport to international traffic. It has the infrastructure needed to welcome tourists and market local produce and handicrafts. Plus, it’s less than 10 minutes from the Pacific coast beaches, will draw traffic congestion away from Panama City, and energize the region from Penonome to David. How could our tourism gurus ignore Rio Hato as the second pole of attraction for tourism expansion?

Costa Rica was faced with a similar opportunity fifteen years ago. So, in 1995 it opened a small international airport to cater to American and Canadian tourists visiting the Pacific coast beaches. Built near the town of Liberia, the airport is some 217 km northwest of the capital city of San Jose. Basically this airport is three hangars hooked together and visitors are only 20 minutes from the nearest beach with no traffic hassles.

The facility has had phenomenal success. It revitalized tourism along the Pacific Coast, boosted real estate prices and the number of home sales, created thousands of new jobs, and reduced traffic in San Jose and its major arteries leading to the Guanacaste province.

Why can’t Panama do the same?