Philippines: Misery for 250-km 'south road’ travellers

Manila: Fill up your gas tank, bring adult nappies, and lots of patience.

That’s the advice given to travellers running the gauntlet of slow-moving traffic on the south-bound road from the capital Manila to Bicol and beyond.

Soil erosion triggered by incessant rains, poor construction, overloaded trucks and sub-par quality infrastructure have all conspired to cause untold misery to hundreds of thousands of travellers, especially those taking the long drive home for Christmas.

Sub-par infrastructure

The “South Road”, part of the so-called “Pan-Philippine Highway” is not for the faint-hearted. Given the holiday travel rush, it is ​chock-a-block: serpentine queues go back hundreds of kilometres.

It is emblematic of the Asian nation’s creaky infrastructure. But it’s not for lack of money. Or engineering capability: It’s culture. And nature.

The Asian country is regularly hit by typhoons, and earthquakes. There are concerns that if the cloudbursts continue, the landslide currently causing the bottleneck along Andaya Highway (Cabutagan area of Lupi town) in Camarines Sur province could worsen.

There are other reported chokepoints along the way, as of Wednesday (December 18).

The Asian country pours trillions of pesos into infrastructure each year. From January to September 2024, the Philippine infrastructure spending reached Php1.143 trillion ($19.37 billion), 11.9-per cent higher than the Php1.021 trillion spending in the same period last year, according to the Department of Budget and Management.

The South Road (mostly two-lanes), in particular the Lucena-to-Naga stretch, via Andaya Highway, is distinct for being the 250-km misery of Philippine road travel.

Major artery

All told, the area served by this “Maharlika Highway” (also known as Route 1/AH26) is more than double the size of The Netherlands and Belgium combined. Thousands of trucks, buses and cars use it daily to move people and goods up and down the mineral-rich Philippine regions of Bicol (population: 6,082,165), as well as Eastern Visayas (4,547,150) and Mindanao (26 million people) via roll-on-roll-off ferry.

In his “The Long Road to Bicol” post early on December 18, Elmer Valenzuela stated on X: “Alaminos pa lang heavy traffic na (“We’re only in Alaminos [Quezon Province], but the traffic is already heavy”.)

Alaminos town in Quezon Province is about 253 km from Lupi, Camarines Sur, within which major logjams are reported in the runup to Christmas travel rush.

Michael Salas rued how it took him 22 hours to cover a distance of 500 km – equivalent to a speed of 22 km/h on this “Pan-Philippine Highway” from Sorsogon, the southern-most tip of Luzon mainland, to Paranaque, a Manila suburb.

Most of the waiting was on its Andaya Highway segment (designated as National Route 68 [N68] of the Philippine highway network), which extends from the town of Sipocot in the province of Camarines Sur to the boundary of Quezon Province.

Opened in the 1990s as Quirino Highway, then renamed in 2004 as Andaya Highway, this 92.65-km stretch is under perennial repairs for a good part of three decades.

Cave ins

The long tailbacks in Lupi was caused by a cave in, reportedly triggered by heavy rains, allowing only one-way traffic, according to the Philippine Land Transportation Office (LTO).

“Currently, only one lane is passable due to the eroded portion and ongoing road reblocking, resulting in slow-moving vehicular traffic. Travellers are urged to exercise extreme caution when traversing this route,” LTO stated in a Facebook post on Wednesday (December 18, 2024).

At the same time, part of the highway in Libmanan, Camarines Sur is also reportedly waterlogged.

Google Maps listed the Alaminos-Lupi stretch (length: 255.7 km) at 6 hours 51 minutes – about 36 km/h.

What the law says

By law, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) runs the building and maintenance of national roads (except the road toll expressways, which are run by concessionaires).

In the Philippines, there is no explicit law that directly allows congressmen to profit from public highway projects.

Yet there’s also no law against it.

Kickbacks form a key part of daily life in the Asian country: a 2007 study by the Philippines’s Office of the Ombudsman pegged losses arising from corruption at Php100 million daily ($2 million/day, or about $730 billion/year) in 1999.

A report by KPMG also cited the “weaknesses in planning, preparing, and executing” infrastructure projects in the Philippines. “These systemic issues can contribute to subpar infrastructure quality”.

Allegations of conflicts of interest then arise from “systemic loopholes, lack of transparency, and the control congressmen can exert over project allocation and funding.”

Discretionary funds

Philippine congressmen historically had access to discretionary “pork barrel” (called PDAF, or Priority Development Assistance Fund), allowing them to allocate resources for projects like public highways in their districts.

How it led to abuse

These funds were often subject to kickbacks allegedly given in exchange for awarding contracts to favoured contractors.

Studies cite some of the enablers of the kickback culture: low salaries (from Php273,278 [$5,040] to Php312,902 [$5,295] per month for senators and members of the House of Representatives), red tape, low risk of detection and punishment for corrupt offences, and a culture of tolerance.

Legal status

In 2013, the country’s Supreme Court declared PDAF unconstitutional. However, alternative “discretionary funding” mechanisms, such as the “lump-sum” allocations in the General Appropriations Act (GAA), have reportedly continued the practice.

There are some exceptions, where portions of the national highway are a breeze for commuters. But the Lucena-to-Naga is notorious for being in a constantly bad state of disrepair.

Quality issues

Several reports provide insights into the challenges faced by these regions within the broader context of the Philippines’s infrastructure development.

A report on the Rural Infrastructure Fund Project includes information on infrastructure projects in Camarines Sur, such as the Port of Caramoan, citing existing port conditions and the need for improvements, shedding light on infrastructure challenges in the region, according to USAID.

Addressing these issues requires comprehensive planning, adequate funding, and effective implementation strategies to enhance infrastructure quality.

Research conducted by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) to assess the state of the country’s road and rail transport infrastructure shows that the Philippines lags behind its Asean neighbours in both the quantity and quality of infrastructure.

Many targets are also unmet due to “low absorptive capacity” and implementation “challenges” in the country, according to a study published in European journal EconStor.

Given the December rainy season, and subpar infrastructure, the situation could get worse before it gets better.

A $3.38-billion plan to build a 420-km expressway from Quezon to Bicol (known as the Toll Road 5 project, from Lucena to Matnog, Sorsogon) by SMC Infrastructure won't pan out until 2028 or 2030.