CEBU City Mayor Michael Rama should stop daydreaming and copying cities he has visited recently.
This was the suggestion of City Councilor James Anthony Cuenco, committee on transportation chairman, after Rama announced that he wanted all 10 remaining skywalks in the city removed because they no longer served their purpose.
Rama instead suggested replacing them with underpasses or underground pedestrian crossings, which he deemed to be more effective.
The mayor had pointed out that Melbourne, Australia and other countries did not have skywalks.
Rama took a leave of absence from Oct. 31, 2023 to Dec. 16 to be in Australia with his family.
“We do not need to copy other world cities where the mayor has visited recently. We only need to use our heads,” said Cuenco in a text message to SunStar Cebu on Sunday, March 17, 2024.
“He should stop daydreaming,” he said.
Special purpose
Cuenco said skywalks were built to serve a special purpose, which was to safely allow pedestrians to cross one side of a busy thoroughfare to the other and allow traffic below to flow seamlessly without having to stop every so often.
The local legislator said the solution does not require digging costly tunnels which will take years to build.
He said the City only has to be “resourceful and innovative” like deploying personnel of the Department of Public Services (DPS), job order employees, and other City Hall personnel in the skywalks to ensure their proper use and cleanliness. The City should also install closed-circuit televisions so pedestrians will not hesitate to use them, he added.
Rama earlier said skywalks have become an interim drop-in center for some mendicants.
Cuenco said the City Council can also pass an ordinance penalizing street dwellers who use skywalks as shelters and repositories of human waste.
He said the Prevention Restoration Order Beautification Enhancement team and Department of Social Welfare Services personnel should be asked to patrol these places and round up mendicants and transfer them to more suitable facilities.
He said the City has a lot of more urgent and pressing concerns that need to be addressed like drought, water shortages, flooding, and traffic, which City officials need to focus on considering the City’s limited financial resources.
Rama’s plan to remove the remaining skywalks came after two skywalks along Osmeña Blvd., the one near Fuente Osmeña Circle and the other near Cebu Normal University, were demolished last February to pave the way for the implementation of the first package of the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (CBRT) project.
The government spent over P9 million to build the two skywalks around three decades ago.
Skywalks of “concern”
In an earlier report of SunStar Cebu, Rama identified several skywalks which concerned him.
The skywalk in Barangay Day-as has one end connected to a sidewalk, he said, while in Barangay Banilad, one side of the sidewalk ends on a sidewalk and the other end leads to a jeepney stop. There are also skywalks which have one end connected to a sidewalk and the other end leading to establishments.
The one along Escario St. obstructs the sidewalk, he said.
City Councilor Jerry Guardo, committee on infrastructure chairman, said five skywalks are expected to be affected by the CBRT construction.
These are the skywalk in Barangay Pardo in front of the Sto. Tomas de Villanueva Parish, the skywalk near the University of San Jose-Recoletos Basak campus, the skywalk near Cebu Institute of Technology-University and the skywalks in Barangays Kamputhaw and Banilad. / JJL