DPWH stops diggings to ease Nueva Vizcaya traffic

VEHICLES take turns passing through single-lane portions of the national highway in Barangay Nagcuartelan in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya. MELVIN GASCON / Inquirer Northern Luzon

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya—Under fire for causing traffic gridlocks, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Cagayan Valley region has suspended all road repairs along the national highway, in anticipation of the heavy volume of traffic on Monday.

Nerie Bueno, DPWH director in Cagayan Valley, said she had directed project engineers of ongoing road diggings and repairs along Daang Maharlika to suspend work, amid public uproar that these had been the cause of traffic gridlocks over the past days.

“While we maintain that our projects are not the root cause of these problems, we are suspending all work so as not to cause added inconvenience to the public,” she said.

The DPWH and the private contractors of road projects have been criticized for their failure to manage traffic at work sites along the national highway here.

Being faulted are the road widening and repair projects along the zigzag portion of the mountain road in Diadi and Santa Fe towns, where stretches of single lane roads were causing gridlocks that lasted for as long as 12 hours.

The DPWH has 26 projects along Daang Maharlika in the provinces of Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya, for which it spent about P1.2 billion. Eight of these projects, worth P449 million, are in Nueva Vizcaya.

Bueno appealed to motorists and commuters to be patient, saying they were trying to finish the projects at the same time. “We are doing our best to address these problems; in fact, even our field personnel are forced to render overtime work managing traffic. But there are also things that are beyond our control,” she said. Melvin Gascon, Inquirer Northern Luzon