The possibility of deferment stemmed from the RDC’s Infrastructure Development Committee (IDC) lamenting the absence of a traffic management plan that would ease traffic congestion in the area.
To the average person on the street who are unfamiliar with and have no patience in dealing with bureaucratic minutiae, the absence of a traffic plan for a major project seems ridiculous at first, almost like jumping off a building or a cliff without a safety net or anything to break one’s fall.
Yet crafting a traffic management plan or any alternative safety nets for any project for that matter had never been a defining quality of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) whose mid-level and top local officials leave it to the local governments to sort things out.
In fact we can hazard a guess that the DPWH regional office simply attends RDC meetings and other meetings called by local governments only for compliance’s sake.
Being bureaucrats with zero empathy towards the public they were supposed to serve, the DPWH’s general attitude towards local governments and by extension, their constituents, can be summed up thus: “We do our job and if you’re inconvenienced, complain to your local officials, not to us.”
In last Tuesday’s meeting where the IDC raised the possibility of deferring the underpass project, the DPWH only sent a mid-level engineer to deal with the council and said mid-level official didn’t even know anything about a traffic management plan for the project.
That said, deferring the underpass project is something that should be weighed carefully by the RDC. The IDC Chairman, Businessman Glenn Soco, reiterated that he wasn’t opposed to the underpass project but he still raised the possibility for its deferment which means all bets are off between now and the March 16 meeting when the council finally decides on the project’s fate.
This is where Mandaue City Mayor Luigi Quisumbing should step in if he hasn’t already at this time. While the project site is a concern since it is a gateway to most points in Metro Cebu, deferring the project now will only result in more traffic congestion in the immediate future.
There is major inconvenience on the riding public and the motorists, no questions about it, but deferring the project will only prolong the uncertainty and lead to either its cancellation or delayed implementation whichever comes first.
Which is why Mayor Quisumbing should decide now if his administration will support the project or let the RDC decide its fate and with it, the resolution to the city’s traffic problems.