Tuesday, September 02, 2008 Editorials: Traffic authority and politics
NO PROBLEM with the concept of a Metro Cebu Traffic Authority or other Metro Cebu “authorities” focusing on specific or general areas of governance.
The growth of Metro Cebu the past few decades, with Lapu-Lapu becoming a highly urbanized city and Talisay and Naga acquiring cityhood, have made the need for coordination among local government units compelling.
Traffic and transportation issues no longer just concern the main urban center Cebu City but other Metro Cebu areas as well.
It used to be only the City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) of Cebu City when one talks about traffic enforcers, but traffic growth has prompted Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Talisay to either set up or beef up their traffic enforcers’ corps.
Cebu City cannot talk of a mass transport system without considering traffic flows to and from neighboring local government units.
Light rail transit, an often proposed mode of transport, can’t be limited to one city.
Bickering
The concept of Metro-wide administrative or coordinative superstructure, however, needs to go through local government units, or more specifically their political component, and that’s the tricky part of it.
The reason why no “authority,” whether for traffic or ala-Metro Manila, has been set up with Cebu is not that nobody has proposed it in the past but that officials of Metro Cebu cities and towns are not warming up to it, mostly for political reasons.
Cebu City once wanted to have a bigger say in such an authority, being the “big brother,” while officials of smaller towns frowned upon the idea of their getting the shorter end of the deal, like being used as dumpsites of Metro garbage.
Support
With the present political situation, how can a traffic authority be discussed by officials that bickered in the past, like say Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and leaders of most of the Metro Cebu cities like Talisay and Lapu-Lapu?
This, though, may not prevent proponents from going ahead with the proposal, and the public may, in the end, have to support them if only because the idea is not bad and may answer a specific Metro Cebu need.
