Ormoc: Progressive city with no traffic plan

I am far removed from Ormoc. I am a Cebuano and I live right here in Cebu. If I have some friends and relations in Ormoc, they are probably few and long out of touch. I do get to visit Ormoc at least twice every year.

This is in keeping with family obligations, since my wife is from Leyte, or from the town of Carigara, to be precise. Carigara lies about halfway between Ormoc and Tacloban. To get to Carigara, I either go to Ormoc first, or go via Palompon, whichever the weather makes convenient.

This is not, however, an article about travel or geography. Neither is it about politics, although I may touch a bit about political policies. I am writing about Ormoc because I am amazed at its progress, and even more amazed that it seems to have done nothing to deal with progress.

There was a time when Ormoc was a relatively sleepy place. But that was back when the so-called “slow boats” were still the main mode of travel between Ormoc and Cebu, its main trading partner.

But with the advent of the fastcraft, traffic between Ormoc and Cebu increased several fold. This introduced consequent changes in the way of life of people there. The speed of interisland travel had to be matched with speed in land travel.

And so came the so-called vans for hire, cutting travel time between Ormoc and Tacloban, the provincial capital, by about half. With the boom in travel came the boom in business. Since it was quicker to move people and products, businesses naturally sprouted and thrived.

The Ormoc of today is abuzz with life. It has come to nurture many of the amenities found in the big cities, on a much smaller scale, but still enough to attract good business from tourists, both local and foreign.

Unfortunately, much of the layout of the city of Ormoc is still very much like what it had been in the days of the slow boats of 20 years ago. The streets are essentially the same, notwithstanding the fact that traffic volume has perhaps quadrupled, maybe even more.

It is like a war in the streets of Ormoc. It is a mad jumble of big vehicles such as trucks and buses, and smaller ones like cars, jeepneys, tricycles, mororcycles and bicycles. Throw in the people and the ambulant vendors and you have real chaos.

What immediately comes to mind on getting caught in such urban madness is the apparent lack in Ormoc of comprehensive traffic management. The few policemen or traffic enforcers you see in the streets do not make up management. They are just simply untangling traffic.

As I said, I am far removed from Ormoc. So I do not know if in fact it has a comprehensive traffic management program in place. But if it has, then I am very sorry to say that I think it is one big fat failure.

On the other hand, if it does not have one in place, then the time to set one up was yesterday. Ormoc needs to have a comprehensive traffic management plan because it is choking itself to death with traffic.

There was a time when one got the feeling that Ormoc was outpacing Tacloban in development. But not anymore. The businesses and shopping centers that first sprouted in Ormoc ahead of Tacloban are now viable options only to those who have no options.

To those with options, Ormocanons would rather shop in Cebu, which is just two hours away, or in Tacloban, which now has the first big and realistic mall in Region 8. For to shop in Ormoc is to go through the gauntlet of its maddening streets first.

If you survive the gauntlet with your sanity and your car emerges unscathed, you suddenly find the effort all for naught because you have no place to park. What a waste for such a beautiful and progressive city as Ormoc to be strangled by its own mindless traffic.