EDITORIAL - Nothing being done about Metro traffic

As if traffic in Metro Cebu is not bad enough already, it will soon get even worse. This is because on Monday, repair works on the 44-year-old Mandaue-Mactan Bridge will commence, thus constricting the flow of traffic going to Mactan. The repair works are not expected to end until just before Christmas. Another site already undergoing road concreting is a stretch of A. Soriano to D.M. Cortes in Mandaue City. The project will take up to near the end of July to complete.

Aside from these two projects, some work is also being done on a portion of the SRP tunnel, thereby adding to the overall woes of motorists and commuters in the Metro. But before road users start damning to high heavens all these repair works being simultaneously undertaken, they need to consider at least two things — one, that the projects are necessary and unavoidable, and two, that they are not the real culprits but lack of government foresight and planning.

The urban centers of Metro Cebu, meaning the contiguous cities of Talisay, Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu, have simply become too small for the number of people that live, work, and study in them, as well as for the number of vehicles that flow through its mostly narrow and meandering streets. There has been little or no urban planning undertaken to address these problems at a time when planning would still have made a difference.

Right now, any planning to address these problems in the present time (generally understood as between now and five years ahead) is too late. Any planning will have to focus on a Metro Cebu that is 30, 40 or even 50 years ahead of the present time. Maybe this failure to plan ahead has grown from the acknowledged difficulty in finding funding sources for any viable projects.

Such is the bane of being in a country where power, and therefore the ability to arrogate its fruits, is concentrated in a single place — the capital. What projects may come the way of smaller satellites of influence like Cebu would always generally be little more than a pittance, almost always never enough to solve what problems may exist, and almost always coming too late in face of newer problems.

Nevertheless, it would still have been useful had appropriate plans been made and made available, as this would still have meant tremendous gains in time just in case some funding sources can be found. Unfortunately, officialdom capitulated to the realities on the ground. No visionaries ever appeared to take the cudgels for the virtues of being prepared.

And so, Metro Cebu is grinding to a halt. The smallest hiccup that interrupts the flow of traffic somewhere will always create serious traffic repercussions elsewhere. With development going on unbridled even by the slightest caution, the road network stagnates and stays the way it is. There is not the slightest tweak to extend its capacity, as if everybody is just waiting for the problem to solve itself. Well, it is not. So, like Manila Cebu will be, in that city's worst attributes.