Solving the Mambaling traffic mess

If Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will make good his promise to stop deploying traffic enforcers to the underpass construction site along Natalio Bacalso Avenue starting today to give way to the presence of Land Transportation Office-7 personnel, then all hell will break loose in Barangay Mambaling and the surrounding areas.

This after LTO-7 director Victor Caindec said no enforcers from the agency will be deployed to the area unless he and Osmeña will come up with clear conditions for the LTO to take over the management of traffic.

A word war erupted between the mayor and the LTO regional chief when the latter challenged the former to resign if the agency can solve the traffic mess in Mambaling and nearby areas caused by the ongoing project.

In accepting the challenge, Osmeña said if Caindec can solve the Mambaling traffic problem, he will let the LTO manage other areas in the city with serious traffic congestion. If Caindec and the LTO will succeed, Osmeña said he will not only resign but will also endorse Caindec for mayor.

The mayor doesn’t need to accept Caindec’s challenge. In the first place, it is not the job of the LTO to manage the flow of traffic in a certain locality. Such is a concern mainly tasked to the local government unit.

That is why a local chief executive has all the power under the law to put things in order in his area of jurisdiction. Problems on uncollected garbage, clogged drainage, and heavy traffic are solely the responsibility of the mayor who is the one answerable to the people once he fails to address those basic concerns.

Osmeña does not have to argue with Caindec. He should have instead taken the latter’s comments as a challenge to continue coming up with ideas that would improve the underpass traffic situation. Giving in to Caindec’s challenge is like admitting defeat in the effort to solve the Mambaling traffic mess.