EDITORIAL - Great SRP plans, no traffic provisions

Cebu City is debating with itself on what to put up as a joint venture with private partners on a particular piece of property on the SRP, or the South Road Properties. One part of it is saying a sports hub would make for a nice project. Another part said a new I.T. hub would be an even better investment. As some sort of a compromise, a combination of the two was suggested.

It is always good when the talk revolves around investment, especially if it is of the revenue-generating kind of public expenditure or capitalization. It is definitely so much better than just spending for spending's sake, like allocating allowances for single parents, a most wasteful and counterproductive proposal if ever there was one.

Whether it is a sports hub or an I.T. hub or a combination of both is good for as long as the projected return on the investment is realized, and it serves the purpose for which it is created. There are, however, a few things that need to be looked into first before Cebu City rushes headlong into the projects, impelled for no other reason than the desire to generate income.

Foremost among the essential concerns that need to be looked into first is the matter of accessibility and traffic. Right now, the SRP is only accessible in three ways – from the coastal road in Cebu City, from the south road in Talisay City, and from an access road in Mambaling. Even today, with most of the SRP still nothing but a vast emptiness, save for two or three big ticket investments that are yet to open, traffic is beginning to manifest itself as a problem.

Any road problem in SRP, be it a traffic accident or a vehicular failure, causes a humongous traffic jam that takes hours to untangle. And it is easy to see why. For such a vast expanse, it only has three entry/exit points as mentioned above. Other property developments in the city that are even much smaller in size have far more entry/exit points. The Cebu Business Park (Ayala), for instance, has five. The north reclamation area has no less than seven.

If the SRP is now experiencing more and more traffic jams even when the big ticket investments there have yet to open, one can only imagine the monstrosity of the problem when these investments open. Add to this the proposed sports hub or I.T. hub or a combination of both, either or both of which are huge drawers of people, and thus vehicular volume, and we are really in for a big mess.

So before the city even thinks of putting in more investments, it is imperative for it to first consider its traffic options and then promptly put in place what it eventually considers. Now, while it still can. Now, before it is too late. The SRP is mesmerizing for its huge investment possibilities. Let us not get too mesmerized that we lose our grip of the realities.