By Andre Palma
Philippine Daily Inquirer
FILIPINO motorists spend thousands of hours twiddling their thumbs in traffic. Really if you think about it, this is something that many of us have accepted as part of daily life. Whether behind the wheel of your own car or on some type of public transportation using the same congested road network, there is no escaping the molasses-like pace of the bumper-to-bumper, rush hour mayhem we call traffic.
Yet one need only look up, toward the heavens, for deliverance. Well, one really need not look that far up. Just meters above the jammed chaos of some of our major thoroughfares is a mode of transport immune to the stifling crawl below. In a one-on-one battle from North Edsa to Taft Avenue you know where logic dictates to best bet your hard-earned cash. Hard as it is to swallow, the elevated trains are decidedly faster than anything with an internal combustion engine and four wheels.
Racing the train
The stubborn, like the author, will attempt to better the speed of the train. At an average clip of 60 kilometers per hour (kph), this is a task that does not seem too tall and is really quite achievable. Add to this that the train does stop to take on passengers at stations. Racing the train may seem like the reckless and haphazard doings of a bored teenager, but there is a deeper-seated reason for such an exercise.
Think of trying to better the time of the train as a driver and his automobile’s last stab against obsolescence. Even in other more developed countries, this automobile versus train theme plays out in a similar fashion albeit in a more extreme manner. In the land of the rising sun, a racing subculture pits bespoke engineered super cars versus a true super train, the 300-kph Super Express Shinkansen.
This epic struggle is played out on a world-class battlefield, a highway that straddles a high speed section of train tracks. This is none other than a section of the 70-km Bayshore Route of the Shotu Expressway that runs to and fro Yokohama and Tokyo, the straightest section of highway in all of Japan. On a Shinkansen ride last October, I saw this section of highway firsthand and was awed.
Highly illegal
In some places it is merely three lanes wide with an additional apron for emergency stops; wide by Philippine standards but rather narrow for a maximum velocity run exceeding 300 kph. Factor in the slower traffic and the merging vehicles from exits and rest stops, and racing the train takes on a new flavor. It is obvious also that trying to beat the train on the wangan highway in Japan is highly illegal and at times lethal. Yet in a conformist society, these wangan racers are seen as outlaw heroes, immortalized in volumes of comic books, cartoons and even video games.
Even if it takes upward of 800-bhp, working aerodynamic improvements, custom cut gear ratios and trick suspensions to best the bullet train, the whole point is that it can be done. In a way, the wangan racer’s protest of speed gives people hope that the efficiency of what is arguably one of the world’s foremost train systems can be bested by the right combination of driver and automobile.
Not losing hope
So the next time you are stuck in traffic, lost somewhere in between boredom and frustration, one need not lose hope. You don’t have to beat the train to assure yourself that driving is still the best way to get around our metropolis. The mere fact that you are attempting to best a constant, means that you still have petroleum pumping in your veins — there is some part of you that enjoys driving, whatever the conditions.
In the end, we need not surrender our keys for a train pass after all; we need not surrender our souls to the lure of efficiency and traffic-free comfort. I, for one, will try again tomorrow.
