Frying the pan

For the past months, the traffic situation in the self-proclaimed Kapitolyo City has gone from bad to worse. From badly snarled traffic, to highly ineffective traffic enforcers, it is amazing how people who drive these roads everyday have kept calm and not get into fits of rage.  I, myself, have had the misfortune of having to experience this during the past couple of months, and have noticed that things have gotten way worse.  And things aren’t getting any better.

Recently, our ever unreliable public (does not really) works department has revealed that things are going to go from worse to much, much worse thanks to infrastructure repair plans they intend to implement in the coming months.  First, there’s the plan to rehabilitate the first bridge.  According to that department, this plan would include the rehabilitation of the bridge’s road surface, repair of damaged deck slabs, acquisition of road right of way access, clearing of illegal structures and many others.  If you stop there, this sounds like a very good idea.  Infrastructure improvement and repair is always a good thing. 

Unfortunately, there is a very big catch.  The whole undertaking will supposedly take 330 days, and they will close one lane of the bridge to vehicular traffic once the project starts.  Now, we all know that this schedule estimate is nowhere close to the truth.  If anyone from that department would dare to refute my claim, I will gladly point them towards the still unfinished “we will complete the rehabilitation of this road before the international summit” piece of trash they call a project. 

It is bad enough that they haven’t finished one project and the traffic has gotten pretty bad.  Can you imagine the mayhem the bridge closure will cause once this next project will be implemented?  I’ve been stuck in crawling, two-hour, bumper to bumper traffic, almost every day, travelling from Diaper island to the mall that is close to the border of this pompous, wannabe city and the main city.  If people were, despite worsening traffic conditions, able to keep their calm all this time, I have a feeling this will start the fire.  And social media will be awash with more road rage videos that many mindless netizens would ignorantly and happily bash just because someone else is doing so.

You know what this department should do instead?  Expedite the process of the third bridge.  Traffic is bad enough with just two bridges linking both islands.  Closing one bridge and expecting people to thank them for giving them one miserable year of horrid traffic is not going to get them anyone on anyone’s Christmas list.  Oh, and speaking of Christmas, I believe the project is set to start when the Holidays roll in.  Good luck!

As much as I wouldn’t want to say it, and because I highly respect a lot of people who fall under the category, it is so sad that, even if their official acronym is nowhere near it, public works department’s initials are PWD.  We all know that PWD also stands for people with disability.  And in all truth, I know a lot of people with disabilities who have more worth to society than the brain-dead, motor-function challenged people in the public works office.  Do us a favor public works office and don’t try to line up with the PWD’s, they have more dignity, put in more hard work, and are more capable than you.

And plus, it makes more sense to build the third bridge now, than to waste money and make matters worse by shutting down one more thoroughfare in an area struggling to find better ways to get out of the horrendous mess that is called Kapitolyo traffic.