It takes no more than a jeepney ride passing through either the flyover along Governor M. Cuenco Avenue in Cebu City’s northern corridor or through the one that runs parallel to N. Bacalso Avenue in barangay Tabunok, Talisay City to understand the misery brought to bear on motorists and passengers by flyovers.
As has been pointed out by many Cebuanos, the construction of the Banilad-Talamban flyover did not improve traffic in the area one bit. Three years after the flyover was opened, a commuter can still find himself stuck inside a jeepney on its slope for a good 20 minutes—if he is lucky—even outside peak traffic hours.
The Tabunok flyover, meanwhile, is a point of congestion that significantly delays travel to Cebu’s southern towns, what with jeepneys, multicabs, tricycles, vendors’ stalls and pedestrians surrounding the flyover that is frequented even by trucks, buses and minibuses.
Lest these flyover-cum-traffic nuisances be taken as mere exceptions, consider the flyover near Cebu Business Park. That flyover, too, has not exactly made driving through the area a smooth-sailing activity.
In his letter to President Benigno Aquino III asking the country’s chief executive to stop the construction of new flyovers in Cebu City, Mayor Michael Rama pointed out that such structures would take away the aesthetic value and historic integrity of nearby sites and structures.
A flyover near the Asilo de la Milagrosa along Gorordo Avenue would, for instance, dwarf the shelter, a cherished landmark of Catholic Church charity in the city. (Not to mention disturb the nuns and their charges in the asilo.)
Some years ago the plan to build a flyover near the Carmelite Monastery in barangay Mabolo was squashed following a public outcry. Had the plan prospered, the relative and rare inner-city peace of the monastery and its immediate environs would have been lost forever with literally two decks of vehicles wheezing about.
But its not merely for the sake of silence and order, historicity or beauty that the construction of flyovers is drawing so much flak from government officials and constituents, traders and the transport sector.
More flyovers in the city are opposed simply because erecting these structures would entail wanton spending of hard-earned taxpayers’ money to show that something concrete has been accomplished yet without thorough dialogue with constituents and integration of these plans with the bigger of picture of what the city should look like in the not-so-distant future.
It’s alarming that flyovers on the intersections of M.J. Cuenco and General Maxilom Avenues and Gorordo and Archbishop Reyes Avenues seem to be on the brink of being railroaded while stakeholders say that the city does not have an updated traffic master plan.
Think how such a traffic master plan would have the bigger chance of being a panacea to streets that are narrow and getting narrower. A master plan, not the weak Band-Aid of flyovers, will address the monstrous mess that is traffic in the metropolis.