SRP to gain from no flyover action — Tom

THE South Road Property (SRP) will benefit from preventing the construction of flyovers in the city.

Rep. Tomas Osmeña (Cebu City south district) said preventing flyover construction would be like allowing city streets to choke in traffic.

Osmeña said the anti-flyover movers didn’t realize that congestion would discourage new investments in the city.

Osmeña, however, is looking at the brighter side of things because the traffic in the city would drive the investments to the SRP where there would be less congestion.

“People do not realize that if they try to remove all flyovers in Cebu City, the one who will benefit is the SRP,” he said.

Osmeña said that the city is now becoming very congested and crowded.

“Nobody would want to build in the area because it is too congested,” he said.

Osmeña said the proposed flyover projects would have helped ease certain roads of congestion.

With the suspension of the implementation of two new flyover projects worth a total of P600 million, Osmeña said that many Cebuanos hadn’t realized what they lost.

If the projects wouldn’t be implemented, Osmeña said he didn’t know what would happen to the P600-million funding which Rep. Rachel Marguerite del Mar managed to secure from the national government.

Osmeña also lamented the display of “double standard” in the efforts to project the Asilo dela Milagrosa church against the proposed flyover project in the area.

Mayor Michael Rama said in an earlier interview that the structure was a historical landmark which a flyover project would only destroy.

However, Osmeña said that on the contrary, Rama wanted Fuente Osmeña circle redesigned to make it look like the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees in Paris, France.

“It is very clear that he (Rama) is ego-tripping,” said Representative Osmeña.

The Fuente Osmeña Circle is one of Cebu City’s landmarks./Chief of Reporters Doris C. Bongcac