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Yesterday I spent almost five miserable hours trapped in traffic on NLEX because of the flooding in the San Simon area. Five hours hardly moving, with nowhere to go and no way to get off the expressway. It reached the point when some of us could no longer hold our bladder and had to pee into a bottle inside the vehicle. I could only imagine how much worse the ordeal must have been for women, children, elderly passengers and people with medical conditions.
What makes the experience more infuriating is that the flooding in this area is not unforeseen. San Simon has flooded repeatedly during the rainy season. NLEX management knows where the vulnerable sections are. It has real-time information on road and traffic conditions. Why then are motorists not adequately warned before entering the expressway or well before reaching the flooded section, especially those driving sedans and other low-clearance vehicles that obviously cannot safely cross deep floodwaters?
This is not merely an inconvenience. It is a question of motorists’ rights and public accountability.
We pay substantial toll fees precisely because we expect a toll expressway to provide a reasonably safe, properly maintained and efficiently managed facility. Of course NLEX cannot prevent typhoons or extraordinary rainfall. But it can anticipate flooding in a known flood-prone area. It can monitor water levels. It can warn motorists early. It can divert traffic before thousands of vehicles become trapped. And after years of recurring flooding in the same place, surely we have the right to ask: What permanent engineering solution has been undertaken, and why has it not solved the problem?
Perhaps it is time for affected motorists to explore a collective legal action and ask the Toll Regulatory Board to investigate whether NLEX Corporation has adequately fulfilled its obligations to the motorists from whom it collects tolls. At the very least, motorists deserve a clear explanation, an effective early-warning and diversion system, and consideration of refunds or toll credits when people are allowed to enter and pay for an expressway despite management already knowing that traffic ahead has become virtually impassable.
This is not asking the impossible. We are not demanding that NLEX control the weather. We are demanding that it properly manage a tollway despite the weather—especially when the problem is recurring and foreseeable.
Five hours trapped on a toll expressway, year after year, should never become something Filipino motorists are simply expected to endure.
We pay the toll. We have a right to safe roads, adequate warning and accountable management.
