Saturday, May 24, 2008 City may disallow private cars
IF traffic worsens in the Banilad-Talamban area once the schools open in June, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will pursue his plan to ban private cars there during rush hour.
Osmeña advised those using the Banilad-Talamban route to be “mentally prepared for horrendous traffic,” and that he might have to ban private vehicles there for a few hours a day.
“If worse becomes worst and it becomes intolerable, like I said, during rush hour, I will ban private cars for one hour or so,” he said.
Osmeña believes it would be better that way because public utility jeepneys (PUJs) would be able to transport passengers faster. Preference will be given to the PUJs because they transport more people than private cars, he said.
Unpopular
Although he is aware that implementing a ban would be an unpopular thing to do, the mayor said he does not mind because he has to do what best serves the interest of the people.
“Those people who have cars, chances are most of them are managers, most of them are the business owners. If they come in late, no one is going to fire them,” he told a news conference yesterday.
For City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem, it is still too early to say that traffic would worsen in the future.
“We don’t know yet how bad the traffic will get by the time classes start,” he said.
Jakosalem pointed out that the City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) has been doing its job well, ensuring that traffic near the flyover construction site is “manageable” and “moving.”
Should traffic get worse, Jakosalem said they would increase the number of Citom personnel who are deployed in the area.
Updates
In a phone interview, Jakosalem said they still have to get updates on the acquisition of the lots that will be affected by the road widening in the construction area.
City Councilor Hilario Davide, who was tasked by the City Council to look into the progress of the flyover construction, will meet with the lot owners on Monday to discuss the sale of their lots and road widening.
Jakosalem, though, is not sure how much budget will the National Government set aside for the widening.
Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City, north district) said that half of the budget for the widening has been released while the other half will be released by next week. (EPB)
