Mountain highway still a dream, but…

I remember writing in this column my impression of a historical benefit America received from the military campaign of Gen Dwight Eisenhower in Europe during the second world war. The Commander in chief of the Allied Forces saw the need of highways for a speedy and efficient transport of war materials. After the armed conflict, Eisenhower, when he became the 34th President of USA, built the massive network of multi-laned interstate highways across the entire North American continent. The model from which the I-state was conceptualized, were the European military roads. In that article of mine, i expressed an ordinary Cebuano’s dream of seeing the interstate kind of roads built from the city towards the mountain barangays. Of course, while the concept is grandiose, its implementation will necessarily have to be small scale and modest.

When Michael L. Rama, became our city mayor in 2010, he embarked on an ambitious miniaturized Eisenhower program of concreting the city’s upland roads. The mountain folks, like the Americans, benefitted from the Rama’s cementation projects. When a friend asked me to describe the program, I was even more liberal in my words. I said that before the concreting was done, it was difficult for me to go to my farm in my 4-wheel drive vehicle. But, when the roads were paved by Rama, I could already bring my Mercedes Benz in leisurely cruise.

In fairness to Tomas R. Osmena, when he defeated Rama in the 2016 mayoral contest, he continued to pour cement in places that were unpaved.

The road concreting that Rama and later, Osmeña, did was somewhat pioneering. We thank them for their efforts because their project served a huge need of the people living in the mountains. But, let us remember that both mayors just poured cement. The roads were earlier narrow paths made out of necessity. Sitios and barangays had to be connected. Out of the trails, the roads were built. That was the need. Unfortunately, the roads were not constructed in steep engineering designs. Some of the stretches have dangerous bends and elbow-like corners. The concreting still subjected the users to such defective designs and attendant perils.

Today, let us dream again. We, Cebuanos, are entitled to demand the fruition of our cherished hopes. It is thus our dream that highways be built to connect our mountain villages. The planning has to consider two objectives. The first goal is to build wider roads according to ideal engineering designs. Safety of travel among an expected increased volume of vehicular traffic should rank foremost. There will be running on these new roads more vehicles capable of high speed such that highways to be built puts premium on safety.

The new highways must be built in areas that can be spurred to growth and development. This must be the second objective. There are places in the mountain barangays that are apparently fertile but they are idle because their remoteness to transport facilities negates profitability. Opening them up to efficient road networks will provide the kind of hitherto unknown productivity, the way Ike’s I-state generated.

COVID-19 is the biggest singular problem we are facing. Our leaders focus their minds in solving it. The budget hearings we have recently witnessed showed that our vast resources are tied to all efforts in hurdling the pandemic. We cannot blame them if they target most of our taxes to fighting the virus. Understandably, this dream of new highways to the mountains takes a back seat but it has to be written here again so that it will not be forever forgotten.