EDITORIAL - Tunnel vision

The P1.6 billion tunnel connecting downtown Cebu City to the South Road Properties was inaugurated by President Arroyo last Thursday. The project thus makes it in the nick of time to the statistics underscoring her achievements in infrastructure building.

To its admirers, however, the tunnel is no ordinary tick in the statistics. They are touting it as a first of its kind in the Philippines. But not everybody is happy with the tunnel. And they seem to have some valid reasons to feel aggrieved.

First of all, the cost seems too much for such a simple purpose. If the purpose is just to connect the downtown area of Cebu City to the SRP, the government need not have to spend P1.6 billion. And the more that it didn't have to build a tunnel.

If it is a first of its kind in the Philippines, it must be because there is absolutely no reason to build a tunnel if the purpose is just to connect the downtown area of Cebu City to the SRP, two points that lie unhampered by anything between them.

Most tunnels in the world are built to connect two points normally separated by difficult natural obstacles or terrain, such as mountains, or bodies of water. Only in the Philippines has a tunnel been built to connect a flat unhampered barrio to another just as flat and unhampered.

Indeed, the length of the tunnel is a dead giveaway of its uselessness. The Cebu tunnel measures a short 1.2 kilometers. That is about the distance from the Cebu Provincial Capitol to the Metrobank building, or exactly three laps around the Abellana oval.

Why did we have to build such a useless and costly piece of infrastructure? Just so we can have the bragging rights to finally having a tunnel of our own? Those behind such a useless and costly project must have been afflicted, quite appropriately, with tunnel vision.

Other places in the world that have tunnels do not brag about them because the purpose of these vital pieces of infrastructure become very evident to anyone using them. It would be interesting to find out what foreigners and other visitors can say about our tunnel.