The thing with the traffic mess in Metro Manila is that it is easy to pontificate about the ideal long-term solutions — “consistent enforcement of traffic rules”, “construction of more roads”, “modernisation of public transport infrastructure”, etc. Indeed, all of those are the obvious solutions; solutions that should have been implemented a long time ago — before the problem got to the monstrous scale we suffer today. But given that this is the present and the situation remains the same (i.e. none of the obvious solutions have been implemented), then those obvious solutions still remain obvious but beyond immediate reach.