Roads to progress

Since my days as a reporter, sea sports enthusiasts have been telling me to visit Anilao in Mabini, Batangas for one of my favorite leisure activities, snorkeling.

Last Saturday, for the first time in my life, I did. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I finally decided to visit after learning that the drive from Manila has been much shortened by the opening of the STAR Tollway to the Batangas Port from the South Luzon Tollway.

Anilao is no El Nido in Palawan, where colorful fish as long as my legs mingle with tiny ones in the spectacular reefs where anemone and seaweed sway just several meters away from the shore. From photos, I can tell that Palawan’s Tubbataha is even more breathtaking, but you need a special permit to visit the reef conservation area and I haven’t been there.

But fish also teem in the Anilao snorkeling area. Guests can go kayaking, windsurfing and jet-skiing. There are one-hour basic scuba diving courses for those interested in exploring the depths. Experienced divers take boats to neighboring islands and the Verde Island passage – described as the center of the center of marine biodiversity in the world.

Beach resorts are among the few beneficiaries of El Niño. You still have a few weeks left to visit Anilao before the monsoon season arrives and La Niña brings torrential rains.

This is what a road can do: it makes tourist destinations more accessible, benefiting the sites and tourism’s downstream industries.

It’s the same thing with the art center of Angono and neighboring Binangonan in Rizal province. The drive to the rock shelter with the petroglyphs, carbon-dated to 3000 B.C., has been dramatically shortened to just about an hour from Market! Market! In Taguig because of the opening of new roads bypassing the Maharlika Highway. From the petroglyphs, the shrine in Antipolo is just a 20-minute drive away.

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The drive to Anilao took just two and a half hours from Alabang, Muntinlupa. More than half of that was spent on the narrow road passing through several towns in Batangas after the tollway exit. Perhaps within my lifetime, I will see a road to the resorts of Anilao bypassing the traffic-choked Mabini-Bauan Road.

The drive going back on the same road took longer because of traffic particularly around the public market in San Pascual. Town mayors and local police should improve their traffic management along the route.

In Bauan, the scenery was also marred by the destruction of the hillside, which looked like quarrying, across the Petron depot and Keppel shipyard.

The drive to Anilao was shortened following the opening of the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road or STAR Tollway – the continuation of the South Luzon Tollway from its former final exit, Santo Tomas, to Lipa in 2001, and then all the way to the Batangas City Port for Stage 2, which was completed together with the upgrade in May last year. The STAR Tollway, funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Japan International Cooperation Agency, is operated by the STAR Infrastructure Development Corp.

The drive would have been shorter if traffic didn’t crawl around the tollbooths from the SLEX to the STAR Tollway. When will the toll collection be improved and integrated?

For that matter, why does every major artery have to be a toll road? Don’t we pay enough income taxes on top of a hefty 12 percent value-added tax on consumer goods? We also pay a Road User’s Tax when we register our vehicles, ostensibly for road safety measures. Where does the money go?

From Alabang to the Batangas City exit and back will cost a motorist a total of nearly P500 in toll payments. That’s a drop in the bucket for the .01 percent of the population, but it adds to transport fares for the 40 percent classified as poor. For lower and even middle-income households, P500 when added to other travel costs can be among the disincentives to hitting the beach on a weekend.

In Cavite, the Cavitex or Manila-Cavite Expressway reduces the drive from Las Piñas to Kawit to about 15 minutes – about a fourth or even a fifth of the time it takes on the old highway. But the toll rate is surely among the reasons why there aren’t too many vehicles on the Cavitex.

Kawit is home to the Aguinaldo Shrine; the Bonifacio Shrine is on a hill a short drive away (but you have to exert effort to find it). That area beyond Cavitex constitutes a historical corridor that should thrive from so-called heritage tours.

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Incoming president Rodrigo Duterte, who describes himself as a socialist, may want to consider rationalizing the collection of road tolls.

The provision of modern roads should be a basic service rendered by the government. Taxpayers (meaning all of us, because of the VAT) must enjoy this service without having to pay additional fees.

There are multilateral agencies willing to finance road projects that will spur development in the countryside or ease traffic in urban centers. The Department of Public Works and Highways has shown capability to undertake such road projects.

Roads that cut travel time are among the biggest come-ons for tourist sites. All over the country, we still have a lot of destinations whose potentials have not been fully realized because of poor accessibility.

As I have often written, tourism must be boosted because it generates local employment and livelihood opportunities. With the popularity of eco-tourism, it can also help preserve the environment. The resort owners of Anilao won’t want their waters polluted and the coral reefs destroyed.

With the shorter drive, Anilao is sure to enjoy a boom. Even the drive along the Mabini circumferential road, from the side of the island facing Balayan Bay to the other side of Mabini town facing Batangas Bay offers great views of mountain, sun and sea. The scenic, winding drive reminds me of the route for tourists exploring Hawaii’s Oahu island. Last year, Hawaii recorded over 8.6 million tourist arrivals.

Anilao and the rest of Mabini town have the natural attractions plus established resorts. With a few more improvements in infrastructure, the town can see a visitor surge.