EDITORIAL - Dreams can get lost in traffic

Cebu has many names, most of them earned deservedly. Another might be added -- the place of dreams. Cebu has been attracting a lot of things, from investments to sprawling and rising developments, from foreign expatriates to local migrants, all in pursuit and pursuing dreams, of profit, success, advancement, fulfillment, or simply a new pasture to ride out the sunset.

Everywhere you look, especially but not limited to the metropolitan Cebu area, you will see new residential subdivisions opening up, even more residential high rises making rapid and dramatic changes to the skyline, giant retail magnets that suck in spenders regionwide and even bigger BPO hubs luring in the country's young workers mesmerized by a new lifestyle of mixing work and having fun.

And then there are on the table some really big ticket government spending plans, with still more being promised. If even just half of them materializes, Cebu could be bursting at the seams with platforms from which to launch a million and more dreams. But hey, can we include a little dream about roads, or where and how to move all the darn dreamers?

Before all these dreams turn into nightmares, can we wake up a bit and take stock of where we have been sleeping? For it seems that for all our dreaming, our bed has remained as it has always been -- too small even for roses. All of these new residential communities, tall condominium and office buildings, work and play IT hubs, industrial and commercial parks, malls, and even expanded airports, all of them are commonly denominated by people.

And when you talk people, you talk movement. People move around. You cannot nail them to one spot. And when they move, they need to be transported, either by their own means, or by means of others who they pay, hire, cajole, or whatever it is that people do to make other people move them. The point is, when they move, they need particular spaces within which to move. These particular spaces are called roads.

And there certainly has not been any movement on the matter of building, extending, widening, or whatever it is that needs to be done to improve the carrying capacity of roads. In other words, while the conditions to make the dreams of people come true have improved, thereby attracting even more people to dream even more, almost absolutely nothing has been done to help move all these dreamers around in a quick, safe, efficient, and thus beneficial manner.

In other words, the place of dreams will implode, if not tomorrow, then pretty soon -- because nobody has bothered about roads and taken them all for granted. It appears that in all the dreaming and attracting of dreamers, it was assumed that roads will appear with the dream as well. Well, they will not. To make roads, you need to be wide awake and get dirty making them. Or else all your dreams will turn to dust and may become the only thing moving as traffic grounds to a halt.