Cebu traffic is following the path of Manila

For our special presentation on our talk show “Straight from the Sky,” we tackle a very sensitive issue about water here in Cebu. So we ask the question “How safe is our drinking water?” When I was a young boy living in the Parian District, we got our drinking water from our well or “atabay” behind our house in Ibarra. Back in the 50’s no one questioned whether the water we were drinking was safe or not. We got the water from the well and put it in a “Banga”, which cooled the water.

We never got sick of anything because of drinking our water from the well. But today, Cebuanos have become so sophisticated everyone drinks their water from water coolers or bottled water. What brought this change of attitude in the Cebuano? I don’t even recall if there was a water borne disease that forced us to shift from drinking water from our faucets to drinking bottled water. So now everyone is drinking bottled water. But do our people know that they are drinking bottled water that come from the wells or pumps of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District?

This is why tonight we have with us MCWD officials led by Astrophel Logarta, production manager, and Ma. Helen Aragones, Division Manager Water Quality Division of MCWD to talk about the quality of our water. So watch this very interesting show on our water quality on SkyCable’s Channel 61 at 8: 00PM with replay on Wednesday and Saturday and replays on MyTV Channel 30 at 9:00PM and 7:00AM Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

* * * I was in Manila last Thursday to visit the grave of my friend and mentor, Sir Max Soliven at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. His daughter, Sara Soliven de Guzman arranged for the old driver of Sir Max to fetch us at the airport and bring us straight to the Libingan ng mga Bayani as it was his 85th birthday and I wanted to pay my respects to this great media man.

It took us 45 minutes from the PAL Centennial Terminal 2 to the Libingan, which only tells you that the traffic in Metro Manila has gotten worse every single day. Usually when traffic is that bad, it is due to some accident up ahead. But there were no accidents. But then traffic in Metro Manila has become so bad there really is no such thing as a rush hour anymore. Then on Friday, there was a humongous traffic jam that struck the North Luzon Expressway from Meycauayan, Bulacan to Balintawak in Caloocan City. NLEX became a giant parking lot!

When you’re stuck in traffic for so many hours, the only bright side to this is that the poor sidewalk vendors make good money selling peanuts, cookies, cigarettes, and bottled water to stranded commuters. The cause of the huge traffic jam? Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman Francis Tolentino admitted that this was caused by their implementation of the “One Truck Lane Policy.”

So now they know that this experiment didn’t work. All this is linked to the congestion at the Port of Manila and because they did not solve this traffic problem with the truckers, the prices of basic commodities in Metro Manila have skyrocketed. So will Mr. Tolentino be able to solve their traffic woes? Frankly speaking, I don’t think so!

During the 24th Tourism Personality Award ceremonies at the New World Hotel, many of my friends from Manila who knew that I used to be Cebu City Traffic Operations & Management chairman asked me the question on how we should solve Manila’s traffic woes. I told them that the various car dealers have declared a jump of 13% increase in their car sales. All this adds up to the limited roadway, which is already clogged and since the Philippines do not junk old cars, the roads get congested.

Of course I told my friends in no uncertain terms that the best solution for Metro Manila is a total halt in development. When that happens, developers with extra cash would have to find new opportunities elsewhere and for sure, they can find it in many places in the Visayas and Mindanao. Of course, I submit that we in Metro Cebu are now following the very same path as Metro Manila. Unless we do something drastic, the streets of Metro Cebu will also become a parking lot, which is happening in Metro Manila today.

Of course we can cling on to the Bus Rapid Transit, but at the rate it is going, I don’t see the first bus rolling out in the next ten years. By then the BRT might just already be obsolete. If you ask me, we should bore a tunnel from Cebu City all the way to Balamban and open up new developments there. Why a tunnel? That’s because the Transcentral Highway is just too steep for ordinary traffic to use. Whereas a tunnel under the mountains of Central Cebu could only be a 30 kilometer crossing to the other side. Of course this should be a toll road. But it could spark a new development in an area in Eastern Cebu, which is still largely underdeveloped.