Improve the city’s road network
There is a perception that Cebu City grew without careful and advanced planning. Its road network is not a product of deliberate study. I speak with a little familiarity of the situation in the north district where I vote.
This perception is not baseless. Tell-tale signs are discernible. If we were to take a picture of the city from the sky, (Google Maps, according to the millennials) we would see the city’s perspective as it speaks for itself.
In the last few years, our leaders have been telling us of their plans to address the humongous traffic jams. We are enthralled with such projects as the BRT, LRT, and electronic buses. I hope our officials revisit the growth of the city. The present leadership should factor in the perception that past officials failed to plan. They can do that by looking at the Google map of our city.
Here is a point that should be studied. Many of our supposedly main city streets are narrow, except perhaps for Osmeña Boulevard. Unlike D. Jakosalem Street and MJ Cuenco Avenue, it was apparently built with appreciable width to showcase the center of the provincial government. Its many lanes allow us a wide angle view to behold the solidity of the Capitol. While the obvious original purpose was mainly aesthetic, its design has evolved to be more usefully congruent to traffic demands. Osmeña Boulevard may now be burdened by heavy traffic; I am willing to bet its planner did not foresee this exponential increase of vehicles.
I do not understand why Arlington Pond was built. With its shortness, I speculate it was constructed to serve more private ends than public use. As it is though, it connects Osmeña Boulevard and F. Ramos Street. Glancing at Google Maps, our planners can observe the need to widen Arlington Pond and extend it to V. Rama Avenue and through D. Jakosalem Street to MJ Cuenco Avenue. In order to achieve maximum improvement of traffic, our officials have to consider widening both D. Jakosalem and MJ Cuenco.
Here is another point. Some of our roads are crooked and out of symmetry. Take the case of Echavez Street. It was probably built to handle part of traffic from Lahug towards City Hall and downtown. But imagine this anomaly. Its starting point at corner General Maxilom is twice wider compared to its other end at Sikatuna Street. At this narrowed corner, only two vehicles coming from opposite directions can negotiate one after the other and still have a hard time finding space. Naturally, when opposing traffic converges, jams always result. And not only that, if the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the way Echavez Street curves defies logic.
The BRT, LRT, and modernized jeepneys and buses either implemented one after another or at the same time are good forward planning, the kind we missed in the early years of our community. Taking these steps corrects the error of the past. But, to me, the better thing is to re-engineer our city road network. That way, we prepare better our city for future traffic requirements. Our leaders must INITIALLY (capital letters for emphasis) push for the widening of such necessary arteries as D. Jakosalem and MJ Cuenco, the extension of Arlington Pond and Bonifacio, with this latter road to connect MacArthur Boulevard and Junquera Street before the BRT and LRT wreak havoc on our present road network and before the etransport system further swamps our streets.
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