Why not revive the south diversion road?

I would like to quote just a line from whatever little I remember of Desiderata. That was decades ago when I first read the poem. In all likelihood a part of my wasted youthful energy must have erased a great portion of my memory. I do not also want to read again the text either from a hard copy which I must have stacked somewhere or from the Internet because I am afraid to realize how much of it have I forgotten already.

Anyway, the line that I wish to recall says something like this: "Even the dull and the ignorant, they, too have their story."

Let me acknowledge my being dull in the ways of government planning and profess my ignorance to determine what is good for the public. Having said that, I rely upon Desiderata to say this piece on my insignificant idea to help point out a way to address our increasing traffic problem.

The last time government opened a road here in Metro Cebu was in the 1990s. That is, again, assuming my recollection is correct. A generation has since passed and no public funds had been invested for such kind of infrastructure. Consequently, with the exponential growth of the number of vehicles running on our road networks, this monstrous problem that people call as traffic jams has been our daily specter.

For people to travel from the northern part of the province, like Consolacion town to Minglanilla, its southern counterpart, it is horrible to wiggle through Mandaue and Cebu Cities. The existing roads connecting these two points pass thru these cities. To be sure, the distance between Consolacion and Minglanlla covers roughly just 28 kilometers of flat land. It is much shorter compared to the distance between Barangay Busay, Cebu City and the municipality of Balamban, where the road has long stretches of steep ascent and descent spread within the distance of about 34 kilometers. But, believe me it is a much faster trip of about 40 minutes to drive from Busay to Balamban than negotiating the Consolacion-Minglanilla route that should take us more than two hours.

Why do I talk about Consolacion and Minglanilla? In these two places, we find an increasing number of residential subdivisions being developed in the last few years. This is a clear demography. Because these are residences that have sprouted lately, the residents must have their work in the cities such that they always travel to and from the cities daily.

In a plan Cebu City made decades ago, there was a South Diversion road. On one end, it targeted the hilly part of Candulawan, Talisay (then a municipality) and cut across the hills behind Barangays Busay and Guadalupe and unto a point not far from A.S. Fortuna, in Mandaue City. That plan can be revived with a little modification.

Instead of starting off A.S. Fortuna, it should be re-worked as to target the converging areas of Barangays Talamban and Kabankalan.

Engineers will not find planning the route problematic. Unlike in times past when they solely rely upon maps, some of which were either inconclusive or flawed, in choosing the sites where roads may be built, today they employ the detailed information available from satellite communications. In fact, even before conducting a technical survey, they have the luxury of going to any tall building in the middle part of the city to view the landscape and visualize where to build the south diversion road.

At the top of such building, they will see how roads, appearing like veins, are constructed on the hills of Tisa, Busay and Guadalupe. The south diversion road can take these new networks into consideration.

That is the dull and ignorant in me suggesting to brilliant minds another possible way to solve our traffic problem. This is a solution the local government can do quite unlike my previous proposals (a) putting a limit to car ownership by private individuals, (b) disallowing the entry to our country of such useless things as Multicabs and surplus engines, which only Congress can legislate.

If the city finds the cost exceedingly high, as I believe it is, it can ask for help from national leadership. We have Cebuanos who have overstayed in Congress. If only to demonstrate their love for our city, they can use their connections to make sure that initial funds can be generated for this purpose. Perhaps, this is one accomplishment we, the voters, can be proud of.

The CNN polls scored the first debate as a 62 percent win for the 68-year-old former State Secretary and former US senator from the State of New YorkHillary Rodham Clinton and only 27 percent for the 70 year-old real estate mogul fromAtlantic City Donald Trump.

And so, while the race was said to be on a dead heat prior to the first of the three debates between the two US presidentiables, it now appears that the first female presidential candidate of a major political party in the US has gained much headway, barely 43 days prior to the November polls. This column scored it 75 percent for Clinton and only 25 percent for Trump. We do believe that Clinton will win not just the debates but the White House.

Clinton has demonstrated superior preparation, not only for the debate but for the presidency itself. Her answers to all the questions in the 95-minute, six-segments demonstrated beyond cavil that she is the better candidate with a lot of mastery of foreign policy and world politics. She has better plans for the national economy and national security and has definitely a stronger grasp of the socio-economic and political problems that confront both the US and the world. Trump's attacks that Clinton has no stamina fell flat on Donald's face when Hillary exposed his total lack of experience. Trump was interrupted five times that he was not telling the truth.

The former first lady pushed Trump to the wall when she reminded the 100 million Americans watching the debate that Trump was the man who used to call women pigs, slobs and dogs. He was said to have called former Miss Universe Alicia Machado "Miss Piggy," and referred to Machado as a housekeeper because of the Latina's ethnic origins. Clinton said that Trump was sued by the US Justice Department for racial discrimination for refusing African-Americans to rent any of his real estate properties merely because of their color. Trump, according to Clinton offended President Obama himself for claiming that the president was not born in the US.

Trump tried to fight back by mentioning again Clinton's email hullaballoo and repeatedly called her the typical politician who failed to solve the many problems that beset the nation. Trump claimed that indeed Clinton has had a lot of experiences which were allegedly replete with failures and wrong decisions. But Clinton came back with a barrage of ferocious attacks on