Slow road work worries execs in Baguio’s annual feast

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—A government contractor has sped up rehabilitation work on Baguio’s main gateway, Marcos Highway, amid public outcry due to traffic jams and uncoordinated traffic rules along a 1.38-kilometer stretch there that has turned off motorists, residents and tourists.

But city officials and organizers of next month’s Baguio Flower Festival are not taking chances.

Benedicto Alhambra, city tourism officer, said festival organizers and hotel owners are planning for the worst and have considered setting up pickup points in Rosario, La Union, to ferry tourists through Kennon Road. The 32-km mountain highway is the shortest route to the city but it cannot accommodate buses.

“We considered hiring small vans to fetch tourists who decide not to take the arduous route in Marcos Highway if travel there adds another hour or two by February. We don’t know who will shoulder that cost. Maybe the bus companies themselves because these tourists are their clients,” Alhambra said.

Last week, Ireneo Gallato, Baguio district engineer, said the Marcos Highway project started as part of the 2012 national road improvement program, which must be finished by 2014. The program requires contractors to introduce new highway drain pipes and repave all national roads.

It was a continuation of the simultaneous road projects that took place in Luzon from June to December last year.

Gallato said 18 projects programmed this year were scheduled before and after the Baguio Flower Festival in the last week of February and the Holy Week holiday in April, when the city receives its highest number of visitors.

The Marcos Highway contract started on Jan. 3, a week earlier than its programmed four-month duration beginning in the second week of January and ending in the first week of May, based on a work chart given by Gallato.

Alhambra said officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) announced at a Jan. 11 tourism conference that work on Marcos Highway would end, at the latest, on Feb. 23.

“That would be bad. Tourists come up much earlier and stay for the [street dancing and floral floats] parades [scheduled on Feb. 25 and 26],” he said.

Anthony de Leon, Baguio Flower Festival Foundation Inc. (BFFFI) chair, said the city’s first major road work for the year caught them off guard.

“The whole thing was ill-timed,” he said in a text message sent to the Inquirer. Vincent Cabreza with a report from Plarlene Juliane Valentos, Inquirer Northern Luzon