Wanted a traffic czar for Metro Cebu

Thirty-years after the EDSA revolution, Metro Cebu bagged the unenviable albeit embarrassing honor as the country's "worst city to drive," according to Waze, a popular Traffic and Navigating App. Hmmm, I have Waze in my iPhone, which I use a lot to check on the bad traffic areas especially when I'm in Metro Manila. In fact, last Tuesday right after the rains, traffic was mad everywhere. It took me an hour and a half to get home on what would have been a five-minute ride. This is how bad things have become for traffic in Cebu City.

Last Saturday during the long weekend, traffic was snarled along the Marcelo Fernan Bridge. It took me two hours from Mactan to get back to Cebu City. Now if Waze tells the whole world that our traffic sucks, then the big question is, what are we going to do about it? Mind you, Waze only gets traffic reports from those who use this app and compiles this traffic report and compare it with other cities, and Waze is correct!

Waze is akin to getting your hotel bookings from Booking.com or Agoda.com, Trivago, Orbitz.com and many other hotel bookings app that you can download on your phone. They also inform you on whether your hotel meets their standards. These are the world standards today, which is one of the reasons why I fought the Department of Tourism when it created their own not-so-great Hotel Ratings Program, which I found so faulty and corrupt-ridden that a congressional hearing led by Rep. Raul del Mar and Rep. Gwen Garcia caused the DOT to freeze this program.

So what is happening to us in Metro Cebu? Why is traffic so bad and getting worse? You want to talk about bad drivers? I can write volumes about this. For instance you are turning left along Gorordo Avenue or Mango Avenue and a jeepney is on the rightmost lane, meaning, you expect him to go straight rather than turn left as the two left-turning lanes are already filled with vehicles. Well, nine out of 10 jeepneys are going to turn left and the reason for that is simple - no one arrests him for this traffic violation.

How many times I have written about the three "E's of Traffic Management" (education, enforcement and engineering). Apprehending traffic violators is enforcement while at the same time it educates him. But if no one is apprehending violators, no one is getting any traffic education. This is what is happening in Cebu City today and frankly speaking, I had high hopes that when Mayor Tomas Osmeña took over the reins of government, traffic would have eased a bit because there were many things during the time of Mayor Michael Rama that he did that was unacceptable in traffic management like removing the islands that separate traffic on a main road.

But the return of Mayor Tomas Osmeña did not bring about any drastic changes in our road traffic and things only got worse. The third "E" in traffic management is engineering. I have also written volumes why traffic in Metro Cebu is so snarled and that is because the Department of Public Works and Highways refuses to listen to our advises. Let's start with Cebu City where in the year 2000, I already suggested to build that parallel road to Escario Street. But they refused to listen saying that traffic along Escario Street was still acceptable, that's 16-years later!

Today Escario Street is one of the worst traffic major streets in Cebu City and if traffic is bad there blame it on the political leadership, notably the Liberal Party, for not cracking the whip against DPWH officials who refuse to find ways to reduce traffic through engineering projects.

In Mandaue City for instance, the DPWH constructed a P25 million concrete divider, something that couldn't help improve traffic. If I where the Mayor of Mandaue, I would have reprimanded DPWH for their carelessness.

Again for the nth time, the solution to the traffic mess in Mandaue City is to build flyovers along M. L. Quezon Avenue and another one along Plaridel Street and another one along Mandaue Highway and along A.S. Fortuna Avenue. Four flyovers that we could have constructed during the six-years of the Aquino regime and traffic in those areas would have been history. With the LP leadership led by non-performing Governor Hilario "Junjun" Davide III, we can expect another three wasted years of traffic snarls unless he wakes up from his stupor and does something positive about our traffic.

So what's the solution to our traffic problem? We must have a traffic czar to handle only infrastructure matters starting with the four flyovers for Mandaue City and the parallel road to Escario Street and that includes the direct supervision in the construction of the third Mactan Bridge link. The only person I can think of is Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino, who should be able to handle these infrastructure issues with aplomb! Other than this suggestion, we are stuck for the next three years in traffic!