If anything, the Cebu City Traffic Operations Office pointed out the obvious when it said that the traffic congestion is caused in no small part by unruly drivers and ongoing road projects that seem to occur at the most inopportune time.
As far as projects disrupting traffic are concerned we can point to the infrastructure works done during the APEC ministerial meetings in Metro Cebu for one.
While thankfully this isn’t frequent, the duration of such projects have been quite inconvenient for both the riding public and the motorists who have to endure hours on end to reach their destinations either at work, school or home.
Lately it’s been the Mambaling underpass project which the contractor and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) had promised to complete on or before December this year.
After that Cebu City residents and visitors will see for themselves whether the inconvenience and discomfort caused by the project which restricted motorists and public utility vehicles (PUVs) into using only one lane heading to Cebu City while the southbound lanes were closed for the past few months.
Imagine if the Regional Development Council (RDC) and the opposition in the Cebu City Council succeeded in securing a court order to delay the project even further until alternate routes were planned.
The protracted construction and planning of alternate routes would have further aggravated the traffic congestion though these critics would insist there won’t be such problems if the alternate routes were planned in the first place.
Even then, is there a 100 percent guarantee that there won’t be any discomfort to the riding public? That point is debatable and will be rendered moot months for now but that’s not the only contributing factor for the traffic congestion.
CCTO chief Francisco Ouano said drivers who don’t follow traffic rules are as much the cause of the problem as the ongoing underpass project. It’s not just the taxis and the passenger jeepney drivers that are at fault but the motorists who are not above cutting lanes or counterflowing to get ahead.
We wonder just how many jeepney drivers and taxi drivers are familiar with traffic signs let alone follow traffic rules and signs that clearly identify designated loading and non-loading areas.