IT’S been two weeks and finally I am able to comfortably sit and think at my chair in front of the computer here at home. I guess two weeks of convalescence from the flu is enough to pay the price for a year’s worth of staying up late most nights, being physically spent most days due to hectic work and home schedules and squandering time away reading e-books downloaded from the net.
That’s life.
With a new year before us I would like to think that a better and more insightful perspective would have been gained as we attempt to solve some of our longstanding problems in the city. One of this is traffic congestion. Even with moratoriums being implemented and even with various traffic schemes constantly being adopted there seems no end in sight to the turtle paced, bumper to bumper and sometimes humungous traffic lines generated by hundreds of vehicles occupying both lanes of our narrow streets at any given day.
The problem when broken down is this. At certain and specific times of the day, usually early in the morning, noontime and a little bit late in the afternoon, people driving their own vehicles or riding in one simply want to get from their point of origin (A) to their point of destination (B). Most of these people are either bringing their children to school or going to work and vice versa. When this people converge at the nexus of the city which is at the Central Business District Area (CBD) that is when the most severe traffic occurs.
So since it is 2019 and I guess anything is possible at this point, here are some desperate suggestions that perhaps the city government can adopt to reduce or drastically decrease traffic during those aforementioned specific times of the day.
Issue an executive order directing all city motorists with children that they bring to school regularly using their vehicles to stop the practice and instead through the school establish a vehicle pool system (e.g. school bus) to fetch and ferry their children. It must be implemented within the year.
Along with this is a directive that no private vehicle shall be allowed to enter the CBD area from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. The same prohibition shall apply along the hours from 11 a.m. up to 1 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. This will be on top of another directive that will permanently ban all types of vehicles from parking along the streets and roads within the CBD area at all hours of the day. The exception would be those who have businesses at the CBD area but shall not include those whose intent would be to unload cargo or packages.
Finally come up with a directive to finally remove all bus terminals in the CBD area and put up instead four integrated transport terminals at the outside of the CBD area representing those going to the North, South, East and West of the City.
This might be considered radical suggestions for some but sometimes desperation breed creativeness.