Our bad roads

Many have complained about the road closures last Sunday in relation to the staging of the Cobra Ironman 70.3 Philippines. What makes this event different from the others is that there were four cities involved, but the organizers have done a pretty good job in informing the people about the closures.

There were announcements put up in various areas and they were made in large font that made them easy to read.

The system is not perfect, but what is important is that organizers of races now know better.

* * *

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama announced last week that he wants “international standard” signs put up at the South Road Properties (SRP) to help minimize accidents.

The idea of putting up the signs is good, but what is needed there as immediate solution to the accidents is cleaning up the debris on the road.

There have been many accidents caused by pieces of wood, stones, and other stuff that are on the highway. 

Among the culprits are delivery trucks that are either improperly covered or not covered at all. 

Cleaner streets would help reduce accidents and is much cheaper to do that the signs, which we already know will only be deemed as mere suggestions by many drivers.

It is also important to have proper law enforcement in order to make sure that motorists would toe the line.

* * *

The poor condition of the road was mentioned as a probable cause for the mishap the cost the life of a racer in the Ironman 70.3 last Sunday.

Although organizers have said that the road condition had nothing to do with the incident, we hope that our government would do something about the way we repair our streets.

Mayor Rama said that he hopes organizers would give local governments a longer lead time to prepare for international events so our roads can be improved.

The mayor has a point, but even without the races, the constituents expect our officials to keep on working to make our roads better.

This was also a point raised by one of the readers, Bobby Villareal, when he said that international events we get to have improvements on our infrastructure.

Bobby must have noted how much improvements were made when Cebu hosted the ASEAN Summit. It was just unfortunately used by some greedy individual to enrich themselves through overpriced contracts.

* * *

For traffic updates you can follow @NLQCebu on Twitter and you can also join the Motorists’ Corner page on www.facebook.com.

You can also send email to [email protected].