We can stop the carmageddon In Naga-Talisay!

Last Christmas, the road from Naga to Talisay experienced what is called "Carmageddon" where many of our Facebook friends complained about the traffic mess. A friend of mine told me that his wife called to say that she was still in Naga. At the time of that call, our mass just started. By the time the mass was over, my friend called his wife and she told him that she was still in Naga. On an ordinary day, passing the entire stretch of Naga would take less than five minutes!

Many of Facebook users called upon Cebu Governor HilarioDavide III to help the Municipality of Naga under Mayor Kristine Chiong. But frankly speaking, what can Gov. Davide do when he cannot contribute anything about traffic? When he was councilor of Cebu City, he never attended any of our meetings in CITOM. In short, people are asking the wrong person to solve the traffic problem between Naga and Talisay.

If you ask me, the problem starts at the South Road Properties (SRP). I have always maintained that there should be less open streets that would crisscross traffic along the SRP. If you recall the times when VC Ponce operated the first Mactan Bridge? It was a fenced roadway, which meant traffic would not be disrupted along the way. They should have done this to the SRP. But DPWH made the SRP into an ordinary road way rather than a freeway which we thought it was.

As for the town of Naga, they should not allow the intersections to cross the national road, but allow a U-Turn slot a kilometer away. When we went to Hua Hin in Thailand, their U-Turn slots was two-kilometers away, which meant that there were less vehicles that would cause traffic. So the question is… do we have the political will to enforce such a rule? Who was it who said that when politicians get themselves involved in traffic, it would result in chaos and that's why there was Carmageddon last Christmas in Naga.

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Last week, Facebook was agog over the disappearance of 17-year old Ica Policarpio. Thankfully, Ica was found in Laguna a day before Christmas to the elation of her family. The Policarpio family was profuse in their gratitude to their Facebook friends for all the help they offered the family. But apparently there is a surprising twist to this incident.

We learned that there is something happening in Facebook called a "48-hour challenge" which many say is nothing but a Facebook stunt. So the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has requested to talk to Ica Policarpio to find out whether she was involved in this stunt? Of course the Policarpio family issued a statement that Ica was not involved in this prank.

Apparently whoever designed the 48-hour challenge is doing a disservice to many unsuspecting people because only those people who are seriously lacking in attention would be enticed to join this stupidity. Perhaps we should bombard Facebook to put a stop to this nonsense before things get out of hand. Remember the Aesop's Fable called the Boy who cried wolf? This could happen to innocent youngsters who simply want attention!

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I'm glad that The FREEMAN came up with that editorial yesterday entitled "Systematic approach needed in government calamity response." Let me reprint that portion. "As it is still reeling from the serious effects of tropical storm Urduja that ripped through the Visayas and Southern Luzon, the country found itself bracing for another weather disturbance hovering over Mindanao, which is rarely hit by typhoons. But tropical storm Vinta proved to be more deadly than Urduja when it battered several provinces in the south, unleashing severe floods and landslides, a scene reminiscent of typhoon Sendong's onslaught that submerged Cagayan de Oro City in 2011."

At the end of the editorial it declares, "The problem is that the government has always been slow in its response. In the absence of a systematic approach, it would take several days, even weeks or months, for relief assistance from various agencies to reach calamity victims in far-flung areas." I have been writing about this issue since super typhoon "Yolanda" and still government has not learned any lessons from these calamities, which we suffer year, after year, after year!