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Saturday, May 13, 2006
Residents oppose city's traffic rerouting scheme
By Victor L. Camion
SCORES of residents opposed allowing southbound passenger buses and jeepneys to use the Bagacay-Babajuba road for their entry and exit to and from the Southbound Integrated Bus and Jeepney Terminal in Barangay Bagacay.
The residents expressed their opposition as the City Government prepares to resume the rerouting of all southbound passenger vehicles that was suspended late January following strong objections from drivers and operators.
City Hall had given the drivers and operators at least three months before the transfer to the Bagacay terminal would be resumed.
But in their signed petition some 100 residents of Puroks Santol, Mapailubon, and Matinabangon of Bagacay and Sitio Babajuba of Barangay Banilad objected to allowing the passenger buses and jeepneys to use the Bagacay-Babajuba barangay road.
"We reiterate that the Bagacay-Babajuba barangay road is never suited as the passage-way of big public utility buses and public utility jeepneys and other big vehicles plying the southbound route," the petition, addressed to the City Council of Dumaguete through Councilor Manuel Nelson Patrimonio, said.
The petitioners claimed they have been residing in the area for more than 40 years and knew that the Babajuba-Bagacay barangay road was unsuitable for heavy passenger buses and jeepneys.
"No amount of development can offset the dangers posed by this recent development undertaking especially when the lives of innocent children are lost," the petitioners said.
During the recent regular session of the City Council, Ramon Langcoyan, representative of the petitioners, said the road measured only less than nine meters wide.
Langcoyan suggested that the southbound passenger vehicles should instead use the Valencia-Dumaguete road to and from the Bagacay terminal.
He said the petitioners could allow only light-weighted multicabs and motorcabs-for-hire locally known as pedicabs, to convey passengers to and from the area.
Technically, Langcoyan said, the barangay road in the densely populated route was not meant to accommodate a huge volume of traffic.
The Dumaguete City Traffic Management Office implemented last January 4 the Integrated Southbound Terminal System Ordinance of 2002 in Bagacay, Dumaguete City.
The ordinance aimed to decongest traffic in Dumaguete City streets.
It was first implemented through a dry run in 2004. But it met resistance from southbound transport groups and passengers who complained of inconvenience in going to the site of the new terminal about three kilometers from the city center.
Students and workers who had to shoulder additional fare from the terminal to the different schools in the city were those greatly affected of the transfer.
(May 11, 2006 issue)
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