Thursday, October 02, 2008 Billones: On BMWs and ‘sikads’ By Edgar G. Billones Roads less travelled
THERE is something about Cagayan de Oro that somehow makes me not miss Bacolod, if I stayed a week or so. Sipping coffee in this quaint shop and looking out at one of the main streets of this sprawling northern Mindanao metro, I get the funny impression that these two cities have entered into an unholy pact of harboring the most ill-mannered drivers I have ever seen in this part of the world.
Where else can you see jeepney drivers suddenly stopping in the middle of the street to pick up or unload passengers? Or tricycles and “sikads” suddenly materializing across one’s path from out of nowhere? Or people habitually beating the red light like the survival of humanity depended on them? Or drivers stopping and talking in the middle of the road, unmindful of others who are honking their horn and shouting invectives?
But then, to stretch Jose Rizal in paraphrase, we say, there are only ill-mannered drivers where there are no rules, or where the rules are obsolete, or where there is nobody to implement the rules.
Traffic conditions in a modern metropolis are one of the most visible indications of effective urban planning and management or the lack of it. The movement of vehicles and pedestrians is essential to the delivery of commodities and services, virtually the lifeblood of the city, and its orderly flow should be a fair gauge of the efficiency of a city’s housekeeping methods. It is likewise a measure of the city leadership’s appreciation of the development process and the steps it takes to solve the attendant problems.
Indeed, while increases in population and the volume of vehicular traffic in a community are indicators of physical growth, they do not necessarily mean development in the social and economic sense.
They are most often a result of adverse economic conditions in the countryside causing an urban migratory influx of displaced rural folk. The resulting stress in infrastructure and basic services causes a corresponding strain on a city’s financial resources.
But the bigger pressure this abnormal growth brings is on the capacity of the city managers to deftly adjust to the new realities and abandon traditional methods of running an urban community. And we are no longer talking about finances here; we are talking about gray material resources.
For instance, a lot of people still do not realize that traffic control has ceased to be simply a police matter and has moved into the domain of city management. The traffic cop is a dying breed.
Similarly, it is likewise not highly improbable that the contest between mayors and congressmen on who might be more prolific in the concreting of streets might have been to the neglect of drainage systems, the primary cause of flooding in the city today. Apparently, the race for political points has made our leaders blind to the adverse consequences of unplanned action.
It looks like our city policy planners and enforcers have not graduated from the 1960’s urban administration paradigm.
For instance, despite the heavy traffic load on Lacson and Araneta Sts., our policy makers still have not acquired the will to ban on-street parking and U-turns on main streets, or set up jeepney stops.
As it is, Bacoleños have gone back to living in the days of the “round trip” where there were no jeepney routes and the driver dropped you right at your doorstep. This is probably the main reason why “sikads” and tricycles have started to ply the city’s main streets and downtown areas with impunity.
For lack of a clear development direction from leaders, the population takes the easy, if temporary and dangerous, way of anarchy. So we ask, ‘Why can’t we implement order?’
“Ti dakpon mo, pigado man na.”
Whewww...there’s the tenet that would put all social philosophers to shame. In these parts, poverty becomes an excuse to defy rules and regulations. So, there you are shelling out good money for a driver’s license, vehicle registration, insurance, and road user’s tax, only to find yourself being driven off the road by a “sikad” whose only claim to privilege is the name he wrote on the ballot last election, and for which effort he was paid a few hundred pesos. Jim, who says driving a BMW makes you any better?
Traffic planning and management is but one development issue; there are lots more. Like all of them, it ultimately points to the quality of leadership we have. But then, that’s a topic for another column.
