Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Osmeña: Construction of coastal highway By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
THROUGHOUT history, people have trooped to cities to find jobs. Those who get good jobs and do well financially often are enthusiastic about living in cities, which provide a variety of goods and services and an exciting diversity of social and cultural activities.
Urban social activities enrich the lives of people who live far from city boundaries. Many cities in our country are beautiful aesthetically, culturally and socially. Their centers of population and economic activity are full of life, with ever changing patterns and moods. Their parks, museums, restaurants, theaters and businesses bustle with activity.
As people live, work and play in such cities, they can meet new and interesting people of all ages, in all walks of life, and from all over the world. But then, not all cities are pleasant places to live.
To illustrate, people in Metro Manila are increasingly subjected to problems related to crowding, such as traffic snarls, housing shortages and high rent, lack of parking spaces, congestion in deteriorating and inefficient public transportation systems, loud music in public, crime, air and water pollution and long lines at grocery stores, banks, movies and restaurants.
Metro Cebu cities are now facing these problems. What our local government officials should prioritize is the obsolete road network within Metro Cebu.
Traffic snarls are becoming to be a major occurrence.
The economic sprawl of Cebu will suffer due to the failure of local government to provide highways that are a major factor in economic development.
The Province of Cebu, which has major political control of the area covered by Metro Cebu, should prioritize the construction of the coastal highway from Compostela all the way to San Fernando town.
In fact, analysts are suggesting that Metro Cebu be expanded towards Danao City in the north and the town of Carcar in the south. The rapid urbanization of these areas necessitates the construction of a coastal highway.
An increasing number of residents in Metro Cebu’s central cities are moving to the hundreds of residential homes in the suburbs of Consolacion, Liloan, Naga and Minglanilla, causing traffic snarls in the present obsolete national and provincial road network.
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia needs to have a solution to the traffic crisis in these areas. There is now a need to introduce an efficient urban transportation within Metro Cebu.
In our country, uncontrolled population growth and diminishing job opportunities in overpopulated rural areas force people to migrate from the countryside to urban areas. There too, jobs are seldom available.
An efficient transport, within and between urban areas, will decongest the central cities and encourage migrant settlers (illegal lot occupants) to reside in the countryside.
For this rapidly growing number of migrants, an efficient transport system would encourage them to vacate their dwellings, which are located on idle private and government land, sidewalks, riverbanks and others.
The plan of Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board officer-in-charge Douglas Sanson to allow buses to ply Metro Cebu, from San Fernando to Compostela towns, is a step in the right direction.
Passengers will no longer suffer the inconvenience of disembarking in Cebu City especially so when they have cargoes to handle.
