Why does traffic in Mandaue crawl to a halt?
When I saw on the Facebook page that the humongous traffic the other day that began from the arrival area of the Mactan Cebu International Airport I knew things had gone awfully wrong. If at all, the biggest problem we face in this age of instant communication is the utter lack of transparency by the Department of Public Works and Highways as to what is really wrong with the old Mactan Bridge? Perhaps DPWH Director Arnel Canlas should inform the public about the problems of the bridge.
We learned from the report from The Freeman reporter Mitchell Palaubsanon that the contractor for this repair project could not yet work on the deck slabs of the bridge because they might disturb the 400mm (16-inch) water main distribution pipeline of the Metro Cebu Water District to Mactan that brings 12,000 cubic meters of water to half the households and commercial establishments of Mactan Island. I just can't imagine what kind of revolution would ensue if half of Mactan runs out of water because some clumsy worker broke the main pipe.
Honestly I already forgot the name of the contractor of this bridge as it was built during the Marcos era. But frankly speaking, I really don't trust our local engineers or contractors (especially those "suki" of DPWH) whether they could fix the old bridge in proper way and right time that we need to fix it. Lest we forget, this is no ordinary roadwork that DPWH contractors take their grand time to fix the way they did the roads in Mandaue.
May I suggest that we should ask those big time Japanese contractors to look into this case. These Japanese contractors are known for fixing very things in record time. If my memory serves me right, during the famous Kobe earthquake, a 50-meter railroad bridge fell down stopping the operations of the Shinkansen. Twenty-four-hours later, the top honcho of the Japanese Railway was profuse in his apologies for the delay in fixing that bridge, as it was the first time they had a bridge fall down due to earthquake. But they did fix the bridge within 24-hours. If it was run by Filipino engineers, they would still be talking and pondering for a year on how to fix that bridge.
But I heard that traffic was once again bearable yesterday because work on the old bridge was stopped. I'm glad they did that so that DPWH can plan and map out alternative routes before they restart work on the old bridge. I dare say that DPWH should already put in place the barges that we already suggested to ply the Mactan Channel. These can dock near the Ouano Wharf and reroute traffic at least to these routes.
Meanwhile we can also ask the Magsaysay Ferry to add more boats to cross the Mactan Channel from Pier One in Cebu City so that people in a hurry to go to the airport can take this alternative route. We have no choice but to do this until the new or the third bridge linking the mainland Cebu to Cordova is operational.
But while looking at the stalled vehicles stuck in traffic made me ponder what causes the traffic to ground to a halt and now do we remedy this? Frankly speaking, I already wrote a similar article a dozen times already on what is wrong with the traffic in Mandaue City. That it needs at least three flyovers. The first one is along M.C. Briones Street or the old Mandaue Highway that links it to the United Nations Avenue and on to the Marcelo Fernan Bridge.
When we constructed this new roadway, I agreed not to put that flyover, as traffic wasn't really bad back then. But the planners of Mandaue City should have anticipated the heavy traffic and asked Rep. Luigi Quisumbing who belongs to the Liberal Party for that vital flyover. Alas, he failed to deliver that vital link which is one of Mandaue's worst intersections.
Then we should have put a flyover along M.L. Quezon Avenue corner Plaridel Street because this is a vital link that causes traffic, especially along the old bridge to crawl. This is just a few meters from the DPWH office and yet the only project that they could come up with is that stupid island costing P25 million that we see today. Obviously DPWH engineers did not see the new road technology in the US where they use plastic road dividers that are movable, where a tractor designed to move these plastic dividers can simply move it and make the roadway one lane wider.
This is of much use during the morning rush hour where more vehicles are headed towards the city and few vehicles are returning to the city. So their traffic managers simply widen the road from two lanes to three by a simple tractor mover. Then during the five o'clock rush hour, the traffic managers do the same thing to the opposite direction. Mind you this is not a new technology. Unfortunately we have local engineers in DPWH who are not creative to come up with such ideas…but instead construct permanent concrete lane separators, which are utterly useless!
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