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Thursday, January 08, 2004
2-way traffic in Colon
By Rene H. Martel
FINDING the experi mental traffic rerouting already “protracted” because it’s almost a year since its implementation, the Cebu City Council yesterday ordered that it can no longer be extended come Feb. 2.
While the council approved the recommendation that the two-way traffic on Colon St. and other areas shall remain, the affected jeepneys will revert to their original travel line, as provided in a separate resolution.
It also told the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) board members to be present during an executive session on Jan. 21 and be ready with their report regarding the scheme.
During yesterday’s session, the council approved the recommendations of the committee on energy, transportation, communication and other utilities, chaired by Councilor Nestor Archival.
“This committee firmly recommends the termination of the experimental period on Feb. 2, 2004 and such termination shall not be subject to any further extensions pending the submission of a report from the Citom giving its evaluation on the experimental rerouting,” the report said.
No comment
Valeriano “Bobit” Avila, Citom board chairman, refused to comment on the report, saying he would like to read it before issuing any statement.
He said, however, that it is the council that extended the rerouting.
“Ila ra nang sala nga gisige’g extend. Dugay na na namo gi-consider nga permanent (They’re the ones who kept on extending it. We’ve considered it permanent long before),” he told Sun.Star in a telephone interview.
Even after the rerouting was extended until Feb. 2, Citom has not submitted any report that would justify the scheme, Archival said.
During the council’s Dec. 17 session, council members even pointed the lack of “comparative studies before and after the implementation of the said rerouting.”
Archival, in an interview, said it took Citom a long time to come up with its report when it only said the experiment, which started in April last year, was supposed to last for only 30 days.
Councilor Danilo Fernan said he learned Citom only has a report for a two-day period of observation of one end of Colon St. to the other end.
That explains Citom board’s difficulty in submitting a comprehensive report on the affected thoroughfares, he said.
According to the committee report, various transport groups “were not opposed to the two-way scheme” and even recognized the City Government’s authority to regulate traffic.
What the drivers and operators were complaining about was that the routes’ points of origin and points of destination were not retained.
During the session, Councilor Procopio Fernandez, who also sits in the Citom board, appealed that Archival’s committee report be disapproved, pending Citom’s report.
He was, however, turned down because Citom’s report was already long overdue.
“The committee is of the opinion that the experimental period for the rerouting has been protracted,” the report read.
Archival, however, said Fernandez can always re-submit the ordinance even after the Feb. 2 deadline, once the Citom board has the report regarding the experiment.
Even Vice Mayor Michael Rama, who presided over the session, said he acknowledged what the drivers raised.
“They came to me and asked why in the world that the rerouting has gone almost one year and has not been approved,” he told council members.
(January 8, 2004 issue)
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